Tips on clean install of Snow Leopard

So this week, I installed Snow Leopard on my iMac and MacBook Air. I decided to go with a clean install this time.

Found a nice guide at Cult of Mac - How to upgrade to Snow Leopard the right way

Spring cleaning

The Cult of Mac article mentioned Singular and Omni Disk Sweeper for cleaning up your Mac before the install. Singular seemed to get stuck for me during scanning, so I gave up. For sweeping I used Grand Perspective.

Preparations - Easily forgotten things

Deactivate your accounts on iTunes

Backup lessons downloaded and purchased via Garageband

MobileMe users' benefits

You paid for a MobileMe account? Time to make full use of that. This time around, I used MobileMe to hold the iCal and Address Book data. So no backing up there.

MobileMe users also get access to the Backup application from Apple. With this, you can easily backup and restore your email, Keychain, and Safari settings (bookmarks, but more importantly, all those autofill data and stuff). So in summary, used Backup for:

• Keychain
• Mail
• Safari

Apps where data are in the clouds

We surely need more of these in this world! Makes life a lot simpler - just enter your account, and everything is synced. For me, I only have two apps:

• Evernote
• Netnewswire (a wonderful free RSS reader for Mac and iPhone and syncs with Google Reader).

And the apps with data that have to be manually backed up...

These include:

• Bento
• Delicious Library 2
• iMovie
• iPhoto
• iTunes
• iWeb
• Things
• Together

And finally, those documents

Here's where I sweep my computer and gather up all my files and documents created with:

• GarageBand
• Logic
• iWork
• Microsoft Office

Dump everything in one folder, and after the install, put them back in their new house.

The process

It looks like Apple has decided to hide the erase and install feature to make things more friendly for users. While doing to, it has made it not so friendly to those who want to start out on a clean slate.

Users will have to manually boot up their computer with Snow Leopard DVD, use disk utility to erase the hard drive, and then perform the install. Anyway, it's no biggie.

Overall things went pretty smooth. There was a slight hiccup with Air. (See my previous post for that). Enjoying the new Expose features and the minor improvements. Programs are working snappier (which could be due to the clean install, and not so much Snow Leopard).

After the install

Two things I did in particular after the installation this time.

• Use Bento to create a database and keep track of serial numbers of programs
• Installed Shades so that I can dim my iMac screen. (Why can't I dim my screen on my iMac?!!! Please Apple, fix this!)

Programs I decided not to install yet

I decided not to install iShowU, Skitch, Wiretap Studio. I'm going to see how far the new QuickTime and screen capturing can take me.

How to: Clean install of Snow Leopard on MacBook Air

Finally blocked out some time to do a clean install of Snow Leopard on my MacBook Air. To do a clean install, you have to boot up the Mac with the Snow Leopard DVD. And then use Disk Utility to erase the hard drive.

Since I don't have an external DVD drive, I searched around, and it seems like on Macs, you can run a utility called Remote Install Mac OSX. Here's documentation from Apple. The app is pretty self explanatory and walks you through the entire process.

Beware if you're installing over wi-fi

I also took a look at the PDF guides on the Snow Leopard DVD. It does mention about Remote Install Mac OSX. If you're using AirPort (or via wi-fi), it seems that WEP protected networks don't work. And yes, in my case, I was doing it via wi-fi, and my network happened to be WEP. I left my ethernet cable adapter at the office.

I felt lazy and didn't want to change my Air Port settings, so I decided to share the Internet connection of my iMac without a password. I didn't have any important stuff on the computer, and hopefully my neighbors are all nice people.

In the end, all went fine. It took about two hours I think. Now I just got to restore the settings and get all those apps back in.

Mac Tip: Use Spotlight as a dictionary

Always thought this was convenient and most people might not notice. If you type in a word in Spotlight search on Mac OS X, it will also return you the results of the word from the dictionary.

So next time, if you want to look up a word, you can try Spotlight, first. It might save you a trip to Google or Dictionary.com =)

Gtd / productivity tip: Don’t check email at night!

One of the wonderful, or not so wonderful thing that internet devices has brought to our lives is always having a Internet connection, and allowing us to check email anytime.

For me, the iPhone has literally plugged my head into the Internet. And I find myself always wanting to check email. Check in the morning. Check while waiting for the elevators. Check before I go to sleep...

It has become and addiction and is starting to prove to be a distraction.

Yesterday, I came by a book by Naoyuki Honda, a Japanese productivity expert. Inside his book, he has a nice productivity tip - don’t check email at night. His primary reason, if I recall correctly, is that at night, you don’t have a specific time where you end and stop work.

In other words, you don’t have a deadline to stop working, and you fall in the trap of getting absorbed into the work that the emails lead you to do, and distracts you from other tasks like reading a book, studying, watching news, or simply resting.

I like this tip, and I’m going to try hard to NOT check emails after I get home.

Ok, so I don’t open my email software on my desktop. It’s all ok, right? Oh no, yes, iPhone has push emails! So, do we really need push email? My life was fine without it before, so I’m sure I can handle. On that note, I’m turning off push.

That’s right! I control my emails, not the other way around.

Samples books for free on iPhone

Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can surely take advantage of the Kindle app to sample a big selection of books for FREE! (usually the entire first chapter too)

Here’s how:

1. Make sure you have an Amazon account in US, and go download the iPhone Kindle app for free.
2. Load the app and log in.
3. Press the Get Books button on the top right.
4. Find a book you’re interested, and click on Try a Sample and have it sent wirelessly to your iPhone or iPod touch.
5. Go back to the Kindle app and wait for it to sync.
6. And boom, the sample should appear.

Thanks for reading!

Maxing out your iPhone Mail app with IMAP mail services

At work, do you file and categorize your emails on your computer? With an iPhone, you can accomplish that on the go as well. In other words, you see an email on your iPhone, and you put it into folder A. When you get back to your office or home, in your mail application, that email will be inside folder A.

The trick here is to use an IMAP mail service so that the folder structures for your mail are synced on both your computer and iPhone. MobileMe and Gmail both have IMAP support. First make sure you have your mail application to be set up for IMAP. MobileMe, by default, should be set up for IMAP on your PC and Mac. Gmail users can use both POP and IMAP, so make sure you're using IMAP. Make some folders. On the iPhone once you setup your account with IMAP settings, you will see the folders.

For Gmail users, here are some references for you:

• Getting starts with IMAP for Gmail
• Setting up Gmail for iPhone and iPod touch

And just in case and for reference, here's how to set up MobileMe email on your PCs.

Isn't it amazing that your email can be synced on your phone, computer, and web?

Yahoo users, beware!
Be careful with Yahoo though. If you manage your email on the web at Yahoo, then you’ll be fine. If you download your Yahoo emails to a mail application, Yahoo doesn’t support IMAP on mail applications. Come on Yahoo, where's IMAP?

Mac Tip: Easily record iChat conversations with GarageBand

I recently just found a really nifty feature with iChat and GarageBand. GarageBand and iChat are integrated for recording conversations and meetings. This can also be very nifty for recording podcasts as well. I tried it with iLife '09.

In a nutshell, here's how you do it:

1. Have GarageBand and iChat open
2. Start the audio conversation with the participants
3. Go to GarageBand, make a new project using podcast template (not sure if other templates work)
4. In GarageBand, press the record button, and GarageBand will detect an iChat conference and as you if you want to record it. Neat!

For more details, check out this article from Digital Producer, where I learned about this trick.

It's too bad they don't just have a record function in iChat that immediately launched GarageBand and have everything set up. Now, that would be awesome!

Can I really get some work done with my iPhone alone?

So I was going to meet a client at a train station, and I was about 15 minutes early. Listening to the latest MacBreak Weekly Podcast, I decided to see if I could get some work done on my iPhone.

Consolidating notes

Notes is one of my favorite apps on the iPhone. It loads fast, and serves as an easy way to record my thoughts. Usually I end up with a long list of memos, and back at home, I get the notes off the iPhone, and organize them.

Now, armed with copy and paste with the 3.0 update, I tried for the first time to organize my memos on iPhone. And sure enough, it worked. I could copy and paste text and group the memos together in the same area easily. Obviously, I'd be much proficient on a computer, but this is not bad, and actually doable. And there's something about copying and pasting. It's kind of fun.

Organizing and processing my email

My mail accounts on the iPhone use IMAP and my folder structure is simple. So organizing mail can be easily done with iPhone. The only part I wish the iPhone had was the ability to "Organize by thread", a feature I can't live without on the Mail app on the Mac.

Bookmarking files with Delicious

Sometimes emails carry links that I want to bookmark on Delicious. This was the task I had problems with.

So here's how it works on my computer. On my Bookmarks Bar, I have a Delicious Bookmarklet link. So when I see a page I want to bookmark, I just click on this Bookmarklet, and it would bring me Delicious where I can bookmark the page I'm looking at. (More info about bookmarklets on Delicious here.)

On the iPhone, I tried to do the same thing. It works, except the Delicious page where I choose what tags to go with my bookmarks was rather clumsy on the iPhone browser.

This could be easily fixed though if Delicious optimizes their page for the iPhone, or Apple improves their browsers. For now, bookmarking to the iPhone isn't very smooth yet. Hope this gets fixed.

Tasks I was able to do with my iPhone

So within the 15 minutes wait, I realized I can do two work-related things:

1. organize my memos
2. organize my emails

Pretty nice.

Tip: The obscure "Redirect" feature in Apple Mail

The other day, I was playing around with customizing my tool bar in mail and I ran across this "Redirect" icon. And I tried it out. In a nutshell, basically, it allows you to forward a mail in its original form. None of the "Begin forwarded message... blah blah blah" stuff.

Can't yet to think of a really practical case to use it, but I recall vaguely there were times when I wanted to forward a message as is...

Oh well, a nice little trick. Only time will tell if it's useful and really should deserve a spot in the tool bar.

Tip: How to get videos from iPhone 3GS into iMovie

This weekend I had a chance to go to a Gundam event in Japan where they're exhibiting a life-size Gundam. And it was a great opportunity for me to test out taking video with an iPhone 3GS.

After coming home, I wanted to see how easy it was to do some editing with the videos on my Mac. The entire process went rather smooth, but the steps involved might not be intuitive and apparent at first. So in a nutshell, here are the basic steps to edit your iPhone 3GS videos in iMovie '09 on a Mac.

1. Connect your iPhone and open iPhoto '09.
   
   
2. In iPhoto, you will see your iPhone under devices. (Just to be clear, the name of your device will show up under device. I just happen to named my device "iPhone 3GS".)
   
   
   
   
3. Import everything. After it's finished, select if you want to delete or keep the photos on your iPhone.
   
   
4. Open up iMovie '09. And under your event library, you'll see iPhoto Videos. There's you'll be able to find the movies you just imported from your iPhone.
   
   
   
5. Now you can create a new project and drop your iPhone movies in, and add some transitions and music.
   
   
6. After you're all done. Send it off to YouTube all within iMovie. Pretty slick!

Here's my edited video. Enjoy =)

5 reasons to get MobileMe

If you have more than one Mac and an iPhone (like me), here are 5 reasons why MobileMe would be great for you.

1. Seamless syncing of your calendars, bookmarks, and contacts.

• Real life example #1 : Someone calls you on your iPhone. You create a new contact for him. When you go home and turn on you iMac, your Address Book is updated with the contact.
• Real life example #2: You bookmarked something on your computer, and you're at work or somewhere else with your MacBook. Guess what, your bookmarks are synced, so its available for you. And on your iPhone as well!

2. Remote access your Mac with Back To My Mac.

Some will be plagued with router problems, and have a hard time to get it to work. But when it works, it's sweet.

• Real life example #1: Since I don't have my home mail account setup in the Mail program at work, if I needed to check mail, I can just remote to my home Mac, and check my mail.
  
  
• Real life example #2: Since my todo app doesn't sync on multiple computers, for now, I just remote into my Mac at home from the office, and access my todo app.
  
  
• Real life example #3: For the paranoid, sometimes you just want to make sure your house is fine. Remote in, open up Photo Booth, and you can see if there are any strange activity.

3. Sharing files with iDisk

iDisk hasn't being stable enough for me to use it as actual file storage. It is, however, an easy way to share large files. You can create a special link for people to download a file. You can even password protect it.

4. MobileMe Mail - mail synced everywhere

MobileMe mail is IMAP, meaning all the messages and folders are kept intact on the mail server, just like GMail. This means, you can setup the account on multiple Macs or computers, and you will always have access to same folder structure. And best of all, you'll never have to organize your mail twice again. (well, sometimes you do, when the mail didn't get synced...)

5. Find your iPhone and Remote Wipe

Though these are two features you wish you never have to use. But in case, you lose it, the fact that you can remotely wipe your iPhone serves as a great insurance if your iPhone carries a lot of sensitive information.

There are plenty of other features like having your website, photo gallery, and etc., but I don't think they are the features that really make MobileMe stand out.

That's all folks, and thanks for reading!

GTD tip: Spotlight your Google Docs in the clouds with Precipitate

GTD and searching comes hand in hand.

The GTD involves filing information and tasks away for later retrieval. And retrieval = search, right?

Extending Spotlight to the clouds

I love Spotlight; having the ability to search across all my files and mails on my computer is one I can't live without. There are still limitations such as not being able to search through images, videos, or sounds without tagging them properly. The other limitation is not being able to search the cloud, which is essential today because we have more and more info in the clouds. For example, I have a set of bookmarks on Delicious.com and stuff on Google Docs. Hopefully one day, we'll be able to do that with easy configuration and out of the box.

Using Precipitate to Spotlight Google Docs

Until then, you can use Precipitate to search your Google Docs and Google Bookmarks right from your Spotlight search window. Very neat if you are a heavy Google Docs user.

Thanks for reading, and hope your found this tip useful!

Source: CNET

How to set default email addresses for a group in Address / Book and mail

The problem:

I have members in a group in my contacts all with two email accounts - MMS email and regular email. Every time I send a mail to the group, the default email is the MMS email when I want it to be their regular work email.

The solution:

Apparently it wasn't very intuitive. I thought I could select the email to set it as default via the text menu, and that's not how it's done.

After some Googling, here's the answer. Go to Edit, Edit Distribution List..., and from there you can configure the default emails for the groups.

GTD tip: how to take advantage of searching emails with MobileMe on iPhone

One of the most exciting new features for iPhone users is the ability to search your MobileMe email account.

Limitations - the fine print

From my testing and what I can tell, here's what exactly can be done:

• if you do a search and you can't find something, you will be given the option to search on the mail servers for MobileMe
• however, the search is only confined to that folder.
• Spotlight search seems to be able to search across all folders, but doesn't look like it's capable of doing searches on MobileMe server.

What does this mean? Fewer folders = better!

If you organize your email in a lot of subfolders, this search feature isn't that useful. The trick is to just have a few folders - for example, if you don't categorize at all, you might have an inbox and an archive. Or you might just put everything in your inbox, then everything is searchable.

Personally, I have 3 folders in addition to my inbox.

• Archives
• Waiting for
• Useful

Since I keep all my mail on MobileMe, I'm loving this feature! Can't wait for the iDisk app now.

Two Google tips to help you research and find info

I've worked on quite a couple of research projects at my previous consulting jobs. I thought I share two Google tips that I find to be helpful during my researches.

1. Use quotations for your key words. For example, if you are searching for iPhone 3G, instead of typing iPhone 3G, try adding quotations to it like: "iPhone 3G". This way, it will pick up that exact phrase in your searches. This works extremely handy when you need to narrow down search results. In addition, you can also pair quoted phrases together to narrow results even more like: "iPhone 3G" "tethering on AT&T".
   
   
2. Search for something thru a specific site. Sometimes instead of searching through the big ocean of Internet, it might be easy to pinpoint a site (i.e. specific news site), and search through only that site. To do that, simply put this in your search query - site:domainname.com. For example, to search for Coke at TechCrunch.com, you would enter: Coke site:TechCrunch.com . And voila, you'll get results of Coke that's on TechCrunch.

Hope that helps, and thanks for reading!

How to set up MMS for iPhone 3G/3GS in Japan (SoftBank)

SoftBank gives you two addresses: 1 email address and the other a MMS email address. It can be confusing, so to clarify that a bit, here are the steps to set up the MMS.

1. Go to this link with your web browser or iPhone browser.
2. Your login ID is your phone number.
3. The password is in one of the first few messages sent from 940001 from SoftBank.
4. Once you're in there, you can configure the name of the MMS email addres.

How to turn the iPhone 3G into a speedy business phone

The iPhone 3G can watch movies and YouTube videos. So out of the box, it isn't exactly a "real business phone." After just restoring and getting my iPhone 3G to a clean state with the 3.0 software, I'm going to walk through the steps I did to get the iPhone 3G primed up for business.

Configurations in iTunes:

1. Connecting it to iTunes. It's asking for a name for the iPhone. I'm going to manually set the phone up, so I'm going to disable the automatically syncing of bookmarks and stuff.
   
   
2. Now I got the view with all the tabs.
   
   
3. Under Summary, I'm going to uncheck "Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected", because sometimes I just want to charge, and don't want it firing up iTunes.
   
   
4. Next tab: Info - Enable "Sync Address Book contacts"
   
   
5. Not going to sync my iCal calendars. Going to sync them via MobileMe later. Not going to sync bookmarks for now.
   
   
6. Notes - this one is a new feature. Going to enable it to "sync notes".
   
   
7. Mail accounts - Going to sync my Mail accounts.
   
   
8. MobileMe - Just an explanation about MobileMe. I plan to use my work computer to sync with this iPhone for most of the info. The only thing I'm planning to sync with my MobileMe is my calendar because managing two calendars is too much of a hassle. I prefer to have one central calendar so I can keep track of everything. I'm hoping this hybrid works well. We'll see.
   
   
9. Next tab: Ringtones - Yes, I'll need a ringtone. And the best ringtone for business, the 24 CTU ringtone of course = )
   
   
10. Not going to sync any music nor photos for now. Though, I have used iPhoto for managing images of business cards, and then you can sync it to the iPhone and have all you business cards with you.
    
    
11. No podcasts. And absolutely no videos - it's a business phone right?
    
    
12. And lastly for the Applications tab, no application for now. Since we barely put anything on this thing. The phone should be still pretty zippy. Ok. Let's sync!
    
    

Things to configure in the phone: First Stop - General Settings

1. Settings - let's get on a wi-fi network first.
   
   
2. Settings: Sounds - change the ringtone to 24 CTU ringtone. Ok, now I feel like Jack Bauer.
   
   
3. Settings: Sounds - I personally don't like the keyboard clicks, so I'm turning it off. Imagining you're in a quiet elevator, and typing a text message. Those sounds will stand out = ) Especially in Japan where the elevators are quiet... very quiet...
   
   
4. Settings: General: Auto-Lock - Default is 1 minute. Seems kind of short for me. Going to set it for 5 minutes.
   
   
5. Passcode Lock - This one is important for business use especially because of all the sensitive info and contacts on your phone. By putting a passcode lock, if you lose the phone, someone can't look into the phone and get info from it. I configure my phone to require a passcode lock after 4 hours. And turn on Erase Data, which means after 10 failed attempts, phone will wipe data automatically. Pair this up with MobileMe's remote wipe feature, and you'll have insurance for when you lose this phone. Hope it never happens, but at least, your info is not compromised.
   
   
6. Restrictions - A wonderful new feature in 3.0. Enable restrictions so you can remove (not display, technically speaking) certain apps from your phone. In particular, does a business phone really need YouTube, iTunes, and the App Store. (The App Store, maybe...) Well, for now, I'm going to disable those three. You should know I have another iPhone for personal use =) Anyways, this feature is handy if you're configuring phones for your children or your employees.
   
   
7. General: Home - In this area you can configure what happens when you double click. If the phone is not for business use, having it set to iPod is good. I use the camera so often, I think having it set to camera is great. Unfortunately, the unit I is an iPhone 3G, and not 3Gs, which means the camera isn't that great, and probably isn't that great for snapping memos and etc. So I'm not going with the camera, but rather, "Search". As a side note, if you are several pages of apps, a single click of the home button will bring you back to the home screen.
   
   
8. General: Home: Search Results - You can configure what search results that will show up. I'll be unchecking music, podcasts, video, audiobooks. Maybe this will speed up the search?
   
   
9. General: Date & Time - Going to set it to 24-hour time because everyone in Japan uses that convention. (I prefer AM and PM because I'm lazy to have to subtract 12 every time for the 24-hour time. I mean... the 24 hour time isn't very user friendly...)
   
   
10. General: Keyboard - If you need an international keyboard, here's the place to set it up. I'll be needing the Japanese input.
    
    
11. And lastly under General, there is the Internation section. Most likely you won't need to change anything, but if you live abroad, you can change how phone numbers and dates are formatted according to your region. And if you would like to display your phone in another language, which is really cool. It used to be that they have different versions of OSs, like Japanese, Chinese, and English version. With the iPhone, you can change it to any language you want.
    

Next stop: Settings for Mail, Contacts, Calendars + MobileMe

1. Like I wrote above, I'd like to set it up so I sync the phone with my business computer, but also sync only the calendar from my MobileMe. So let's get to it.
   
   
2. In Mail, Contacts, Calendar, under Accounts, I'm going press the Add Account..., and then choose MobileMe.
   
   
3. After you log in, you can decide if you want to sync Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks. I'm going to sync Mail and Calendars.
   
   
4. You will also have the option to turn on Find My iPhone. By turning this on, you will also have the ability to remote wipe your phone if it ever gets lost.
   
   
5. Back to the Mail, Contacts, Calendar settings area. Turning off "Load remote Images" might save you some bandwidth and some processing power.
   
   
6. Signature: Of course, since this is a business phone, I should put a signature on emails I sent. For mobile device signatures, I like to append this line - "Please forgive typos - sent via mobile phone."
   
   
7. Lastly, make sure the Default Calendar under the Calendars is correct. Most of the time, it's not for me by default.

And the rest of the settings

1. Nothing major in phone and Safari. Let's do take a look at Messages. By default, the show subject field is off. I prefer this on. Don't want people to be getting messages without a subject. Remember this has nothing to do with your email account. This is specific to the Message app (which used to be SMS).
   
   
2. iPod - Since I won't be using the iPod function much, I'm going to turn off the Shake to Shuffle, hoping that it will speed things up just so slightly because the iPhone has one less thing to worry about when I accidentally shake the phone.
   
   
3. Photos and Store settings - nothing there. Ok, moving along.

The best for last - The fun part, reconfiguring the app icons

1. There's not a whole lot of apps right now. I'm basically going to set up two pages - one with the apps that I use, and the other one, apps I don't use.
   
   
2. First off, reconfiguing the apps in the dock. By default, the four apps in the dock is Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod. I generally prefer Settings to be on the dock because I go to it quite often for configuring wifi networks and turning on and off Bluetooth.
   
   
3. As for the left over 3 apps in the dock, after all, this is a communication device, right? So I'll put the main communication apps there - Phone, Messages, Mail.
   
   
4. The apps I don't think I'll be using are iPod, Voice Memos, Weather, Safari, Clock, and Stocks. So I'll be moving them to the second page.

Alright! We're all done. We took out the unnecessary stuff, and we now have transformed the iPhone into the ultimate mobile business machine!

Backing up and wiping my iPhone 3G clean

After the 3.0 update, seems like my iPhone 3G is a bit sluggish and crashing a lot more. Plus, for some reason, emails on getting sent out though receiving is fine. So, I have decided to manually back everything up and do a clean wipe of this iPhone. I'll be blogging my experience. So let's get rolling:

Going down my apps list to see what I need to backup:

1. Contacts - it's synced with MobileMe, so nothing here to do.
2. Photos - Let's make sure I get everything off the camera roll.
3. Stanza, Kindle, YouTube, Skype are all good.
4. Safari is good since bookmarks are synced via MobileMe.
5. Maps is good.
6. Messages - hmm... this is a tricky one. Ok, luckily, I have PhoneView from the MacHeist bundle I purchased a while ago. For those who want to learn more about PhoneView, here's the link. Great, also backed up my Notes. Doesn't seem like I can back up my MMS messages though. Well, at least I got the SMS messages.
7. Calendar is good since it's synced by MobileMe.
8. Things - Let's get the todos all synced up.
9. Voice Memos - nothing there, so I'm good.
10. Mail is good since all the accounts are IMAP.

Alright, seems like I'm good. Now, the fun part begins.

1. Sync my iPhone once and make sure it backs up if I did indeed forget something.
2. Ok, under Summary tab, going to click on the Restore button.
3. Waiting time... going to go to 7-11 to get me a Coke.
4. and we're done! And my iPhone is like new again!

In the next post, I'll be blogging on the steps of setting up my iPhone to be a business purpose phone. None of those YouTube videos and stuff. It's business time!

17 iPhone apps I actually use

Since I'm planning to wipe out, and restore my iPhone 3G, I decided to revisit the apps I have on it, and see which ones I actually use. Those apps will be back on my iPhone 3G after the restore.

So the keepers:

Utilities:

1. Stanza - great app for view e-books and documents. Works great with the desktop app where you can export documents and webpages into e-book format and get them on your iPhone. Desktop app and more info here.
   
   
2. Kindle - You can go on Amazon.com and buy Kindle e-books and have them sent directly to your iPhone or touch. And if you have multiple devices, they'll sync, which means if you left off at page 12 on your iPhone, when you open the book with your touch (on wifi), it will be on page 12 too. Obviously, at home you want to have the actual Kindle with its big screens.
   
   
3. Things - A wonderful todo manager. Works great with the desktop Mac version. However, recently, finding Hitlist to be my preferred todo manager. Waiting for iPhone version of Hitlist.
   
   
4. Skype - Only use it from time to time. A nifty app to have. Plus it's free!
   
   
5. Shazam - Actually found myself using this app more than I thought. Usually I hear a song at a restaurant or super market, and I'll use this app to tell me what song it is. Most of the time, it works. Sweet.
   
   
6. Keynote Remote - I usually prefer using the Front Row remote that came with my Macs. Having to pair it up and stuff, it's a hassle. I'll keep it on a bit more, and perhaps will actually try it in a real life scenario someday.
   
   
7. Amazon.com - Use this one to check out book prices when I'm outside especially at bookstores. Very handy.
   
   
8. Starbucks - Music for the holidys - Not exactly an utility, but if for some reason, you need to be in an holiday mood, this app streams holiday music that has been played at StarBucks for the past few years. Also a must have if you're a Starbucks fan.

Games:

1. Flight Control - Heard this one on MacBreak Weekly. Great game when you're waiting in line or just have a few minutes to kill.
   
   
2. Scrabble - Don't play it too much, but just have it because it's a classic.
   
   
3. Solitaire City - Because my girlfriend loves this game.
   
   
4. iSlots - And like Solitaire City, girlfriend loves this thing.

Instruments

1. Finger Piano - One of those apps to show off.
   
   
2. Ocarina - Just a neat app to have, though I'll be honest, I don't really use it much. I guess, it's also one of those apps to show off your iPhone =)

Japanese apps:

1. Y! - Rosen - Let's you find train routes in Japan.
   
   
2. Terebi - With Softbank's TV & Battery device, you can watch TV as well as record TV to your iPhone. Personally, I don't use it much. But it's nice to know that I can!
   
   
3. Furufuru Pocky - A silly app... Not sure how to describe it so I'll quote from this blog here - "This is kind of a game you want to do when you want to pick one person out of several people. It's very simple, whoever pick the pink pocky is the winner. eg: who is in charge of cooking dinner tonight..."

And the apps that will leave my iPhone 3G

1. Flashlight - thought I'd be using this, but haven't really found myself using it.
   
   
2. TV Listings - Japanese TV listings... don't think I need it.
   
   
3. Sora Annai - Weather app for Japan. It's useful, but don't find myself using it.
   
   
4. Keizai Shimbun - a really cool app that lets you read the most recent Japanese newspaper Keizai Shimbun. A great show off app, but I never found myself reading the newspaper. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...
   
   
5. Currency - Used to use this app quite a while, but slowly died down. Basically it'll give you update to day currency exchange rates. Perhaps if you're into making money via foreign exchange, this is an app to have with you.
   
   
6. USA Today - Find myself not getting news from my iPhone. I guess I just prefer reading news in computer browsers.
   
   
7. Air Sharing - It's a nifty app, but I just find myself emailing files to myself. Too lazy to load up Air Sharing on my iPhone to drop files into it. For MobileMe users including me, an iDisk app is finally coming!
   
   
8. Cooking Mama Lite - Just wanted to try the game out.
   
   
9. 24 Special Ops Free - Just wanted to try the game out because I love 24!
   
   
10. MySpace - Didn't find myself doing this SNS thing on the go.
    
    
11. FaceBook - Same as above
    
    
12. Google
    
    
13. SearchMe
    
    
14. AroundMe
    
    
15. Remote - When I had my AirPort Express with AirTunes hooked up in my living room, this is a super app. Now I gave my AirPort Express away, I'm not using it anymore. If you got a setup where you're streaming contents to a living room, this is a great app to complement it!
    
    
16. Hair Style Lite - Just wanted to try it out.
    
    
17. AIM - Chatting app. Problem is no one I know is on AIM, they're all on MSN! Eagerly waiting for Meebo iPhone app.
    
    
18. What's On? - TV listing app.
    
    
19. Hot Pepper - App to find restaurants in Japan.
    
    
20. Y! Chizu - Japanese map app. Just found myself using Maps most of the time.
    
    
21. Y! Douga - Yahoo's video streaming app in Japan. I tend to stick to my own video library for video contents.

And not that I have a choice of removing any of the native Apple apps, here are the ones I use:

• Contacts
• Photos
• Safari
• Maps
• Messages
• Calendar
• Notes
• Phone
• Mail
• Camera
• Setting - Not sure if you could call this an app.
• Calculator
• App Store
• iPod
• iTunes

Here are the ones I rarely use:

• YouTube
• Voice Memos - I start using this one when there's a streamlined voice-to-text feature. I'm must not used to this listening to my only voice memo thing.
• Weather
• Clock
• Stocks

How to wipe out and restore an iPod touch 2G?

I've been doing some spring cleaning of my home office, and have decided to sell my iPod touch 2G. Taking this thing out of the case, I still marvel at how thin this device is. Really a beauty. Anyways, I'm going to wipe out everything and restore the iPod touch 2G, and I thought I share the process.

1. Ok. I connected the touch to the computer, and have iTunes opened.
   
   
2. Ok, Apple is offering me the software update for 3.0. Not interested because I'm going to sell this shiny gadget, so pressed "Remind Me Later".
   
   
   
   
3. Alright, so on the Summary tab, there's a Restore button. Let's press that. It's going to ask you if you really want to restore. Yes!
   
   
   
   
4. Ok, it's... Extracting software... Prepare iPod for restore... Verify iPod software... wait wait wait...
   
   
5. Looks like it's going to take a few minutes, go get some coffee.
   
   
6. Alright, looks like we're done. And its showing me that software update screen. Apparently they really want you to get this update. Pressed "Remind Me Later" to skip it.
7. From there, you have the chance to Set up as a new iPod or Restore from your previous backup.
   
   
   
   
   
8. I'm not planning to do either, so I am going to just unplug the touch now.

Now I just got to find my box, instructions, and the stuff it came with. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for reading!