MobileMe, despite all the bad press it has been subjected to since its launch, is a really great service. Three members of the Smoking Apples team have been using MobileMe and are extremely happy (for the most part) using it. Even besides the “push” email functionality, there are a lot of other features that just get swept under the rug. This little guide will help you explore MobileMe even further and put those features to good use.

Email Aliases

MobileMe allows you to create email aliases, which are virtual email IDs that don’t exist as separate email addresses by themselves. The emails that come through to an alias are delivered to your original mailbox. You can create up to five aliases at a time and then turn them off or delete them when you are done with them.

This not only allows you to have a ‘myname.junk@me.com’ email ID for Internet signups but also lets you create a serious and professional email ID in addition to your usual funky one (of course, if you happen to be anything like our Editor saab, a “funky” email address is the last thing you’d want). Aliases once turned off can never be used by anyone, including yourself. You can mark aliases with a different colour and direct messages sent addressed to it to a certain folder. Emails sent to any of your aliases will come to your one unified inbox only. You will not have to check any other mailbox to check for messages. Of course, with your desktop Mail client, you can set filters to automatically direct that email to particular folders. 

To create an alias, open http://me.com in your web browser and access the preferences from the Mail toolbar. Clicking on the Alias tab allows you to enter up to five email addresses and then choose to mark them with different colours or add a different name to each one’s “From” field.

To send an email from an alias using MobileMe or the desktop Mail client is easy. A drop down list will be presented with all your available aliases when you compose an email. On the iPhone, however, there is no way to send an email from one of your aliases. However, a clever fix is available, one that involves the use of a Gmail account. Take a look at it on the Apple Discussions Forum. 

A faster iDisk

iDisk in the Finder is pathetically slow and iDisk on the web isn’t practical for everyday use. Enabling iDisk Sync can not only makes iDisk super fast but also keep all your documents in sync across multiple computers.

To enable iDisk Sync, go to ‘System Preferences » MobileMe » iDisk’ and click on Sync Now. Leave the setting at Automatic. iDisk will then sync all your data from MobileMe to a disk image in your ‘Home Folder » Library » File Sync’. When iDisk is done syncing, the rotating arrows animation in the Finder window will stop. 

Drag the Documents folder from your iDisk file system to the Finder sidebar. In my case, all my Pages documents, Keynote files, and other such ‘documents’ are stored on, and only on, iDisk. I backed up all of my documents on an external drive, copied them to Documents on my iDisk folder and then deleted them from the Mac. So, in effect, the only copy I have is on the iDisk folder. 

Once the sync is complete, which might take a while depending on how much stuff you have on your iDisk folder, accessing the files is super fast, since you are using your local copy. 

Note that your iDisk sync will occupy the full amount of space reserved for it on your hard drive. So if you have allotted 10GB for iDisk, the disk image it creates will use up that much space no matter how much data you have stored. I would suggest that you reduce the space allotted and keep increasing it as the need arises. To change your iDisk quota, go to the account settings on Me.com and you’ll find the option to increase the Mail quota in the Storage options.

iDisk via FTP
If you don’t want all the folder syncing but still want quick and responsive access to your iDisk folder, use an FTP client like Transmit or Cyberduck (free). 

Access your MobileMe Mail with Internet Explorer

While IE 7 gives you limited functionality with the MobileMe web interface, IE 6 users are left in the lurch. And in many cases, especially with large corporates, IE 6 is the only installed browser on the machine. To avoid situations where you need to access your email but cannot, use the Mail Forwarding option to send your email across to a Gmail account. Forwarding options are available in the web interface of Mail. Just navigate to ‘Preferences » Other’ and enter any email ID that you can check in IE 6. That way, in desperation, you can still access your email using the Gmail interface, even when you’re forced to do it using the worst piece of software ever written!

PhotoCasting

One of the most innovative features of the MobileMe Web Gallery is PhotoCasting. Right from within iPhoto, you can subscribe to anyone’s shared photo gallery just like you would subscribe to a podcast in iTunes. If any new photos are added to the album by the original author or, if allowed, by the viewers, those photos will automatically show up in your iPhoto subscriptions. 

Access your friend’s photo gallery by clicking on their invitation link or entering http://gallery.me.com/<username> in your web browser. From there, click on any album you want to subscribe to. Copy the resulting link right up to the album number. For instance, ‘http://gallery.me.com/username#100008’ would be the album link. 

Next, go to iPhoto and, from the File menu, select ‘Subscribe to Photo Feed’. Enter the URL and voila, iPhoto will sync up all the photos from that library and ready them for you to browse! The only editing you can do to these photos, however, is rotating them on their axes. You can also copy those pictures to your iPhoto Library (if downloading photos is allowed by the author of the album) and then do whatever editing you choose to do. Whenever new pictures are added to the album, they will automatically show up right in your iPhoto Library. 

Fixing sync issues

While MobileMe sync is supposed to share the “just works” philosophy of the Mac, very often you will come across problems with syncing. In this case, it is best to clear the data on the servers using your most up-to-date Mac. Go to your MobileMe preference pane, then the Sync tab, and click on Advanced. This will bring up a list of all the devices registered with your MobileMe account. It would be a good idea to identify your devices and remove any redundant ones. For instance, in the screenshot, my iMac is showing two entries (one for before I reinstalled Leopard). 

Then click the Reset Sync Data button. You can either choose to either sync all info or, in my case, just the Calendars. Click on the right arrow to replace info on MobileMe with info from your computer. Immediately after the sync is done, go to all your other registered computers, do the same reset sync, except change the direction to “information from MobileMe to this computer”. 

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, reset the calendars there as well. Go into the ‘Settings » Mail » Your MobileMe account’. In there, first turn off the Calendar or whatever other MobileMe service you want to reset, then restart your device, and then turn those services on again.

Do you have any questions or problems with MobileMe? Spill ’em out in the comments so we can discuss them at length.