This really comes in handy to see if the new 2.1 firmware actually improves the signal strength or just makes you think it did.

There are a LOT of other things to look at in this mode, but I won’t even pretend to understand half of them.

To put your phone in this mode, open up the keypad, type the following, then tap ‘Send’:
*3001#12345#*

Below is a shot of what ‘Field Test Mode’ looks like, with the signal strength in the upper left corner:
(Note - these are negative numbers, so the closer to zero you get, the better)

iPhone in Field Test Mode

The cool thing is that when you link to your Exchange calendar, you can view add and edit and changes (almost) immediately show up on the Exchange calendar.

The problem is that if you do that, it’s the only calendar you can have on your phone. Plus I use iCal on my Mac and Google Calendar from time to time… this post explains how I got around that and am now in calendar syncing bliss.

Basically the way I got everything working is I use Google Calendar as a back end for all my other calendars, meaning everything syncs to and from Google Calendar.

First iCal:
I use a program called BusySync, there is another app called Spanning Sync, but BusySync has MUCH better pricing. There is also Gcaldaemon, which is open source but kind of difficult to set up, let’s just say that that kind of app is why I don’t use Linux anymore, but if you can get it working more power to you!

This app lets you select which iCal calendar you want to share with which Google Calendar, then set a schedule to tell it how often to sync.. it works VERY well.

Now Exchange / Outlook:
There is a free sync tool from Google, but it only lets you sync your primary calendar. In my case this is my work stuff that I do not want to mix with my personal stuff, so this didn’t work for me.

What I ended up using was gSyncit. This lets you pick any Outlook Calendar and sync it with any Google Calendar.

I just created a new calendar in Outlook, called ‘Personal’, and synced it with the same Google calendar that I synchronized iCal with.

iPhone:
The iPhone was easy. I just set up a new Exchange connection, selected to sync my mail and my calendar and that was it.

Now when I go to the calendar on the iPhone I can see my calendar for work stuff, the one I created for personal or appointments for both calendars.

The best part about this whole thing is everything is bi-directional.

What I mean is that if I update my calendar on my phone (essentially my exchange calendar) it will immediately show up in Outlook, then when gSycinit runs it will sync with Google calendar and then when BusySync runs it will sync with iCal… so basically within 5-10 minutes my update will show up on all my calendars!

This goes for any of the calendars, I can update any of them and it will update all the other calendars.. a beautiful thing!

Well it came (no I haven’t done the review yet), popped the SIM out of my iPhone and popped it into the HiPhone to play with it.

I put in the settings for SMS, WAP, etc… but it was late so I took the SIM back out, put it back in the iPhone and crashed.

The next morning I went to send an SMS from the iPhone, everything looked good, but the recipient never got it. I tried multiple people on multiple services and none of them got it either, I could get SMS but not send.

I went on the AT&T online support line and they basically just pointed my to an Apple iPhone troubleshooting page. I tried all the suggestions there, including a hard reset, and nothing worked.

I called them back today and got an Apple guy, 45 minutes later he transferred me to an AT&T rep, about 20 minutes later she transferred me to a tech support rep, about 20 - 30 minutes later she told me to take it to an AT&T store.

Frustrated I asked her to give me the SMS Message Center Number… I won’t list it here ’cause if it doesn’t work for you I don’t want to be responsible for hosing your device. Just call support and they should freely give it to you.

I did a little searching on Google and found the code to put that number into the phone. I did a reset and… bingo, I was back in business!

Call tech support for the Message Center Number, once you get it use this code on your iPhone:
*5005*7672*+NNNNNNNNNNN# - NNNNNNNNNNN = the message center number.

That got it working for me, HTH!

Anyway, I stumbled across some info on how to list and install updates from the command line.. SWEET!

If you launch a terminal session an type ‘man softwareupdate’ it’ll give you all the info, but here it is to save you a step.

• softwareupdate -l : Lists all available updates
• softwareupdate -d : Download the updates
• softwareupdate -i
  • item : Installs a specific item
  • -a : Install all updates
  • -r : Install only required updates
• softwareupdate –ignore … : Ignores the specified updates
• softwareupdate –reset-ignored : Clears the list of all ignored updates
• softwareupdate –schedule : Manages the per-user scheduler preferences.
  • on | off

Example

What I used to install 10.5.2 was the following line:

sudo softwareupdate -i MacOSXUpd10.5.2-10.5.2

Cool stuff.

I’m using it to track recipes and some real estate property we’re looking at.

The only thing I really DON’T like about it is the fact that you can’t specify a location for the database so you can’t share it between users or computers… or can you?

This tutorial will show you how.

The first thing you have to do is log on as the user / computer that you created your Bento DB on.

1. If you want to share between computers connect to an Airdisk, network share or iDisk (not sure if the iDisk will work, I haven’t tested it).
2. Using finder, go to your home directory/Library/Application Support/Bento
3. Copy the bento.bentodb file out to the share you connect to in step 1.
   • If you’re just sharing between users on one machine, you can copy it to a folder both users have access to (like /users/share for example)
4. Open up ‘Terminal’ in the Utilities folder.
5. Type (or copy and paste):
   • cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bento
6. Now you have to create a symbolic link the the new location of the bento.bentodb file.
7. Type the following:
   • ln -s /Volumes/sharename/bento.bentodb bento.bentodb
   • Please note that you should replace sharename with the name of the share you connected to in step one.
   • If you’re not connecting to a network share replace /Volumes/sharename with the path you copied the file to in step 3.
8. On the machine, or user, you want to set up to share the db, you need to make sure you launch Bento once.
9. On the second machine (after launching Bento once) go to ~/Library/Application Support/Bento
10. Delete the bento.bentodb file
11. Follow steps 4 through 7

That’s all you need to do.

As far as Bento is concerned the original file is still where it should be and will open fine.

I much prefer a sidebar view like the one in Google Desktop (Sidebar only works in Windows though). I just don’t like having to hit a key to look at some of my common widgets.

This may be old news, but I found a way to move widgets from the Dashboard to your desktop, here’s how:

The first thing you need to do is go to your ‘Utilities’ folder.

You can do this a few different ways:

1. Press Command+Shift+U
2. Go to the ‘Go’ menu and select Utilities
3. Open ‘Applications’ then open ‘Utilities’

However you get there, once you’re there double click on Terminal to open a new terminal window.

The this, or copy and paste, in the terminal window and press Enter:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

After that just log out and log back in.

Now activate Dashboard. Click and drag an icon, while you’re still dragging it, exit from Dashboard (default is F12).

You’re widget will now be on top of all other windows on your desktop. As far as I know there’s no way to put them behind other windows, but you can move it to a corner somewhere and have direct access to it.

With previous versions I never had a problem, I Leopard the drives would sometimes not show up if I clicked on the server in Finder.

Sometimes they would show up, but just wouldn’t connect no matter how I tried….

I made one very simple change and it fixed everything up.

Open System Preferences –> Network:

Click on the connection you’re using. If you’re connected by a wire select ‘Ethernet’, if you’re connect wirelessly select ‘AirPort’, etc… Then click on the WINS tab.

Make sure that the ‘Workgroup’ is set to the same Workgroup you have Windows set to and the WINS server is the IP address of the Windows machine.

Now save the changes by clicking OK.

That’s all I did and now when I click on the server the shares immediately show up and as soon as I click on them I’m connect. Has been 100% reliable since I made the change and hasn’t been slow at all either!

P.S. - If you need to know how to check the Workgroup and IP address in Windows, read on.

• To find the Workgroup in Windows (this example is for XP, your milage may vary).
  1. Right Click ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Properties
  2. Click on the ‘Computer Name’ tab
  3. About 1/2 way down the window you’ll see the ‘Workgroup’ name.
• To find the IP address in windows:
  1. Click ‘Start’ then select ‘Run’
  2. Type CMD then press enter
  3. At the command window that opens type (without the quotes) ‘ipconfig’
  4. Look for the line that says ‘IP Address’

Hope this info helps someone.