Filemakerdave Tidbits: 2007

Friday, December 28, 2007

Converting Outlook email to Apple mail

If your using Outlook as an email client to handle all of your email and want to convert the mail, contacts, calender to Apple iCal, Mail and contacts. The easy way to do this is to use a program call O2M (it cost $10, http://www.littlemachines.com), it makes the conversion easy. It converts the Outlook mail, contacts and calendar entries into corresponding files need for import into Apple mail, iCal and contacts. I had half a million messages in a lot of different folders and it kept all the folders intact with attachments. Well worth the 10 bucks. The reason I converted was to get the better integration for my iPhone.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

iPhone for Christmas

Got an 1.1.2 iPhone for Christmas. Not a big deal for most people but I'm in Canada where the phone is not available. Most of the phones that are used in Canada are using the firmware 1.1.1 and since all the new phones are 1.1.2, the 1.1.1 phones are extremely rare. They are also selling for a lot more than the 1.1.2 versions. At the time of this post the 1.1.2 can not be unlocked for general use.

To get the new iPhones to work, you need to find a Stealthsim or Turbosim. The phone needs to be jailbroken. Video can be found on youtube. The Stealthsim is place over your existing Rogers or Fido sim and inserted back into the phone. There is a small cut (2mmx4mm) that needs to be done to your existing Fido/Rogers sim, it does nothing to the sim (it is only a little bit of the plastic). See video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=yjvW7s-Op5g ( do this at your own risk).

Using this work around is better than hacking the 1.1.1 phones as it keeps the original bootloader 4.6 in tack. This means you can restore the phone to factory if you need to get it back to Apple for warranty. I also found that my buddies hacked 1.1.1 does not work with the Fido data plan, so he only gets wifi, but I have another buddy that has a hacked phone that has both the data and wifi working so it depends on the type of unlocking you get done on the iphones.

The only downside to the extra sim is that it costs $100 or more. So there is an additional cost. The 1.1.1 versions can be unlocked at minimal cost. Check ebay or craigslist. At the time of this posting, the sims are vary hard to get or they are being offered at $150 usd.