Island in the Net » How To

Sync Yahoo Contacts, Calendar, and Mail to your Mac

Khürt — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:30:17 +0000

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I’m a big Google Services user but some of my friends and colleagues prefer Yahoo! I’ve written about how to integrate Google Services with my Mac, iPhone and iPad but I’ve remiss in writing anything about Yahoo! Enabling Yahoo! Services on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) is fairly straight forward.

System Preferences

The direct method for setting up Google services on OS X Lion is via the System Preferences. OS X Lion System Preferences has a new option called Mail, Contacts & Calendars under the Internet & Wireless section. Select it.

Mail, Contacts, and Calendars

If you are an iPhone or iPad owner this next screen shot will seem very familiar to you. To setup a particular service, click the Add Account… button and select the icon for the service. In this case, we are setting up Yahoo! services so select Yahoo!.

Once you select Yahoo! you will be prompted to add you Yahoo! username and password. The username should be you complete email address. After entering your credentials click Setup.

Once your Mac has connected successfully to the Yahoo! servers you can select the services you want to sync to your Mac. Go ahead and select all of them including Yahoo! Chat.

You should now be able to read your Yahoo! Mail via the Mac OS X Mail app, chat on Yahoo! via iChat, and your Address Book should start filling up with your Yahoo! contact. Launch iCal and you will see all your Yahoo! calendar details.

iOS 5 Secure Mail

Khürt — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:30:52 +0000

One of the least mentioned features of the new Mail app in iOS 5 is encrypted email. iOS 5 allows the user to send digitally signed or encrypted email to protect your electronic communications. I’ve written about digital certificates before on this blog. The idea is to use a special key — a digital certificate — to sign and encode your email so that only the intended recipient can read it. I’ve wanted this feature in iOS for awhile. Encrypted email is a great way to send confidential information — passwords, social security numbers etc. — without worrying about who might intercept my email.¹

Getting a digital cert

I use free digital certificates issued by certificate authority Comodo but you can also get a paid one from Verisgn. Getting a certificate issued is quite easy. Fill out the form on the web site with some basic information and wait for an email. Follow the instructions in the email to download and install your certificate. On Mac OS X that means downloading the certificate file and opening it in Keychain.²

Keychain

On Mac OS X digital certificates are store in the Keychain. I want to use the certificate with my iPad or iPhone so I need to bring that certificate over to the iPad. This means I’ll need to export the certificate from Keychain and import into the iPad.

Once your certificate has been installed, launch Keychain and find your certificate in the Certificates section of Keychain. Right click the certificate and export it to somewhere on your hard drive. I exported the certificate from Keychain to my Documents folder. Make to protect the certificate file with a string password when prompted.

Creating a configuration profile

To install the certificate onto the iPad we’ll need the help of the iPhone Configuration Utility³. The iPhone Configuration Utility is used by corporate information technology engineers to manage the configuration parameters of corporate iOS devices. It allows them to create, maintain, encrypt, and push configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs. We’ll be using it to create a configuration profile to install the certificate.

Download, install and launch the iPhone Configuration Utility. Select the Configuration Profiles tab and then press Command-N on the keyboard to create a new profile.

Now you will import the cert you exported from Keychain. Select the Credentials tab and then click the + symbol. Find and select the digital certificate file to import. Enter the password you choose earlier when you exported the certificate.

Installing the cert

At this point attach your iOS device to your computer and you’ll see the device appear in the left hand of the configuration utility. Select the device and then click the Configuration Profiles tab. Find the profile you just created in the list and then click install to push the profile to your device.

On the screen of your iOS device you should see a prompt to confirm the installation of the profile. Once you click install to confirm, you are done.

New profiles entries will be visible in the General->Profiles section of the Settings app on your iOS device.

Configuring the email account

Now that you have a digital certificate on your iOS device you’ll need to configure Mail to use it. You’ll do this from the Mail, Contacts, Calendars tab in the Settings app on the iOS device. Select the email account from the list. Select the Account tab.

Enable the S/MIME switch and then turn on Sign and/or Encrypt depending on what you want to do and then tap Done. That’s it! You can now use the Mail app to send signed and encrypted email.

I’m simplifying a lot here. Read my original article for more detail on digital certificates. ↩
The process is most likely different on Windows but I’m a Mac user. ↩
Corporate command and control IT types use this tool to lock you out of all the cool stuff they are scared of. ↩

iCloud’s PhotoStream

Khürt — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:30:39 +0000

iOS 5 was released this week with a large list of improvements and new features. One new feature that I’ve come to love immediately — I have used the iOS 5 developer beta — is the PhotoStream feature of the update Photo app. Smartphones have grown in popularity and so along with the resolution and sensitivity of the cameras in those devices. My iPhone 4 has a five megapixel (MP) camera and the newly announced iPhone 4S will have an 8MP camera. When you consider how lightweight and compact smartphones are and that we have them with us everywhere we go, you can understand why many people are neglecting their point-and-shoot digital cameras and instead opting to use the camera apps in their smartphones.

What is PhotoStream

PhotoStream is a feature of iCloud and iOS 5 that enabled smartphone photography like never before. With PhotoStream almost every photo I take with my iPhone — there is a 1000 photo limit — are automatically saved to iCloud for up to 30 days. Why is that a big deal? Imagine being on vacation somewhere pleasant and tropical. You’ve snapped away on your camera for a few days when suddenly the camera warns you that you have exhausted the memory card. Yikes WIth PhotoStream you don’t need to worry. You can store 1000 of your most recent photos. You can use the new editing features of the Photo app to make enhancements including red-eye reduction.

What’s really cool is that PhotoStream works on both the iPad and the iPhone. That means that my iPad can use (and edit) the photos taken on my iPhone that are save in my PhotoStream. I can use the larger screen of the iPad with more capable apps to make more detailed edits which I can save back to PhotoStream. With PhotoStream, the iPhone and the iPad are partners.

Enabling PhotoStream

PhotoStream is enabled from the Settings app on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

Launch the Settings apps and click the iCloud icon

Now tap the PhotoStream icon.

Make sure the to switch on PhotoStream before exiting the Settings app.

There are quite a few other features of iOS 5 that are enabled by iCloud and PhotoStream is just one of them.

But there’s one more thing. An update to iLife make iPhoto work with iCloud. Now image that you’ve taken hundreds of photos on that vacation using your iPhone. You return from your vacation and launch iPhoto to download your photos from your camera. But, surprise, because your photos have been stored in iCloud, iPhoto automatically downloads them for you. No cables! But that’s a different blog post.