This is one of those things that I’ve wondered about for a very long time but never got around to actually trying to figure out. Apparently, it’s very easy to set up Mail on Mac OS X to use email aliases:

Do you have multiple email addresses that are “aliases” to a central email account? If you do, you can configure Mail in Mac OS X so that it can easily get and send email from all of your addresses. Here’s how.

This is a built-in (but extremely hidden) feature of Mail, so don’t worry… no hacks required. It would be really nice if this also works on the iPhone after a sync, but I haven't tried it yet. (And I really doubt it.)

UPDATE: Wow, it works. After syncing my iPhone via iTunes, the email aliases show up on the iPhone under the “From:” field when sending a message.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Derek van Vliet has posted a recap of his iPhone Development Advent Tips:

Below is a recap of all of the iPhone app development tips we posted in the month of December advent-style. We hope this serves as a one-stop shop for many aspects of iPhone development that are commonly encountered.

The tips range from how to simply open a URL in Mobile Safari to more complicated tasks like string comparison using NSString. The tutorials are clear, easily digestible and should serve as a good resource for commonly used iPhone programming patterns.

A great rundown by Rob Flaherty on how to Track Downloads and Other Click Events in Analytics with jQuery:

The old way to track clicks and outbound links in Google Analytics was to call the _trackPageview function on the click event, passing it a label that could then be searched for in Analytics. One of the problems with this method was that the clicks were counted as pageviews, affecting your total pageview number.

Now Analytics offers an event tracking feature. It can be used to track downloads, outbound links, mailto links, AJAX events—any click event. But the event tracking function still has to be implemented for each event you want to track. Here’s some jQuery that handles the implementation for you.

Google Analytics event tracking isn’t all that new, but I haven’t seen many articles written about integration with jQuery. There are several jQuery plugins that already do this (e.g., here and here), but Flaherty’s article gives a good high-level view of how to do this without using a plugin while defining things like event category and event label in an automated way based on the type of link that’s being tracked.

According to Paul Irish’s article on Bulletproof @font-face syntax, this is the best @font-face syntax to use:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Graublau Web';
  src: url('GraublauWeb.eot');
  src: local('Graublau Web Regular'), local('Graublau Web'), 
         url('GraublauWeb.otf') format('opentype');
}

Check out his article for more information on why this works and the road he took to get here.

Just a quick tip if you’re working in the Terminal a lot. I realized I was doing a lot of copy/pasting of paths into different Terminal tabs and was growing tired of having to take my hand off the keyboard just to highlight paths for copying. (Yes, I realize that sounds ridiculous but it’s actually pretty annoying after a while.) Mac OS X comes with a very handy utility called pbcopy for piping the result of a Terminal command directly into the system wide clipboard. I’m sure this has been around forever but it’s new to me.

Its usage is simple. For example, to copy the current path directly to the clipboard, type:

pwd | pbcopy

Note: This also copies the newline character since it’s part of the output of the pwd command so if you’re pasting this into another Terminal window be warned that pasting will also send an “Enter” keystroke effectively executing your command. For me, this works fine since I’m usually just changing to the copied directory.

Check the man page on pbcopy for more info. (There’s also pbpaste which does, well, what you’d expect it to.)

If you’re a fan of the Grid-A-Licious style resizable grid, Zack Grossbart has written an article showing how to create your own sliding resizable grid using jQuery:

I really liked the effect so I’ve created an improved and simplified version of a sliding resizable grid and released it under the Apache License 2.0.

Smashing Magazine has a great article on Setting Up Photoshop For Web, App and iPhone Development:

Most people who have designed websites or apps in Photoshop will, at one point or another, have had issues trying to match colors in images to colors generated by HTML, CSS or code. This article aims to solve those problems once and for all.

Great article on a long running frustration of mine.

Tweetie 2 just went live on the App Store and it has a bunch of really amazing new features. One that I’m particularly excited about is that Tweetie now has the ability to use a custom URL shortener (as long as it mimics either the bit.ly or TinyURL APIs). I use Yourls which — as luck would have it — is compatible.

Here’s a quick run down of how to set up Tweetie 2 to use a custom Yourls install for URL shortening:

In Tweetie 2, Go to Settings -> URL Shortening -> Custom. If your Yourls install is set up as public then put in this string:

http://EXAMPLE.COM/yourls-api.php?format=simple&action=shorturl&url=%@

If it’s private, you’ll need to add the username and password parameters:

http://EXAMPLE.COM/yourls-api.php?username=MY_USERNAME&password=MY_PASSWORD&format=simple&action=shorturl&url=%@

Replace EXAMPLE.COM with your Yourls installation’s URL and of course be sure to replace MY_USERNAME and MY_PASSWORD with your actual username and password. You can see the Yourls API docs for more info on why this works.

PLEASE NOTE: If your username and password contain non-alphanumeric characters, this WILL NOT work without an additional step. You’ll need to URL Encode the special characters. There are plenty of tools around that’ll do this for you. Just plug in the URL encoded values instead of MY_USERNAME and MY_PASSWORD.

Gone are the days of having to switch to Mobile Safari just to shorten a link with Yourls before posting to Twitter.

Great CSS tip from Mike Rundle on Twitter:

Oldie but goodie CSS trick: to autoclear floats, put overflow: auto; and zoom: 1; on the container DIV. Works IE6 and up.

I always end up forgetting this and having to look it up.

A few months ago, Fraser Speirs — developer of the Darkslide Flickr app — wrote about what’s on his iPhone. It really got me thinking about my own iPhone app organization strategy and how things could be done more efficiently. What follows is an outline of my method for organizing iPhone apps and why I use it.

Background

I’d say that most iPhone users I know haven’t bothered changing their home screen, let alone their dock. For some reason this is Apple territory. This must be my most important stuff since Apple set me up this way. Many people just remember where a new app lands after they download it, and it stays there. Any time they want to use it, they end up hunting for it until it’s launched. This really hit home for me when a new site called “First & 20” was recently launched. First & 20 showcases a “collection of iPhone Home Screens from some very talented designers, developers, and tech writers.” I was very curious to see how these power users — or, at least what I had perceived to be power users — had chosen to organize their iPhone, but what I noticed was that few of them had made any significant changes to the default home screen that shipped with their iPhone. Mostly they had simply rearranged apps or had replaced one or two apps with those that they knew they needed on the first page.

On the other end of the spectrum are the few people who do try to organize their iPhone Apps. Usually they start off by categorizing their iPhone Apps and then putting those categories into pages. This is what I did after getting tired of trying to remember where an app was when I needed it. It’s generally a good idea and I think it works well for most normal iPhone users. The problem is, I am not a normal iPhone user. My iPhone is a huge part of my workflow (and playflow) and I spend a lot of time on the thing, so getting the most out of even the smallest interactions with it really adds up. I need fast, predictable access to my most used apps.

Utilizing the Built-In Shortcuts

The iPhone comes with different “buckets” and/or shortcuts for accessing your apps.

In order of priority, they are:

1. Double-tapping the Home button: This should be your most used app. (Or the app that you need fastest access to.) Unfortunately, it’s limited to Phone Favorites, Camera or iPod (and search, but that’s not really an “app” per se) at this time. Hopefully one day Apple will open this up and allow you to use any app in this position, but for now, those are your only options.

2. Dock: This is the next fastest place to access apps since you can get to them no-matter what page you’re on. These four slots should be filled with your next top four priority access apps.

3. First page of apps: Version 3.0 of the iPhone OS enabled another handy shortcut. You can get to your first page of apps from any other page by simply single-tapping the Home button. Therefore, the first page of apps should be filled with your next level of important apps. I call these the “essential” but not necessarily “urgent” apps.

4. Other pages: This is where you can go back to categorized app pages. For example, I have a page dedicated to just games. These are non-essential but you want to have them all organized and in one place so you know where to go when you need them. Grouping similar types of apps together helps you remember where those lesser-used apps hide. If I’m looking for a game, I know it’s only a few swipes away on the games page.

A note on the Spotlight Search (introduced in 3.0): I go back and forth between how I feel about the usefulness of the Spotlight Search as an App Launcher (a la Quicksilver or LaunchBar). I suppose that if you had very many apps and/or pages this might be more helpful but I find that the precision needed in typing out an app’s name while on the go just isn’t justified when I could do the far-less precise action of screen-swiping to the page where the app is located. But of course, that’s only because I have a good idea of where all my apps are. (If I didn’t have a good idea where everything was, searching for an app would probably be the only reasonably fast way to find it.)

The key to fast, predictable access to your apps really is organization. With this setup I find that I spend most of my time on the first or second page of apps with only minimal need to access other pages. A trip past the second page usually means I’m looking for some specialty app that I don’t use nearly as often.

On To The Examples

First and foremost it should be noted that I use the built-in iPhone camera a lot. It may not be my most essential app, but it’s definitely my most urgent app. When I need it, I want to be able to pull my phone out of my pocket and have the camera up and running as soon as possible so that I don’t miss whatever it is I’m trying to photograph. That’s why I’ve set the camera app to come up when I double-tap the Home button. It’s the fastest way to get an app launched and luckily it’s one of the three built-in apps that are allowed to be assigned there.

Secondly, my dock houses Phone, Mail, a Twitter client (currently Twitterrific 2.1 while I wait for Tweetie 2) and Things. Definitely my most used apps. I try to keep any apps that have a notification badge on the first two pages since those are the two pages I’m most likely to notice.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the rest of my pages:

Page 1: Essentials

Most of these are used several times daily. Tumblr, Birdhouse, an RSS reader (currently Newsstand while I wait for the next version of Byline) and Instapaper Pro are all used heavily on my daily commute to work via the glorious bus. QuadCamera is also here because next to the built-in photo app, I probably use this camera app the most and I like having quick access to it.

Page 2: Widgets/Second importance

Used daily or every few days. These are usually apps with one or two very specific functions. Yes, I realize that half of this page is filled with photography related apps. What can I say, I take a lot of photos with the iPhone’s built-in camera.

You might be wondering why the Groceries app is here. Well, although I may not go grocery shopping every day, if I realize that I need to pick something up at the store, I’ll add it to my shopping list in Groceries right away. Having relatively fast access to this page makes this quick and easy to do. (Which means I’m more likely to do it.)

Page 3: Reference/Third importance

Generally used weekly or a few times a week.

Page 4: Games

Yay, games. (Mentally, this page also acts as a faux-end to my app pages. Anything I use often should be before this page.)

Page 5: Misc/Occasional

These are apps that I very rarely use but I want to keep on my phone so I don’t have to re-download them to use in that rare instance I might need it.

Page 6: App Graveyard

This page is for apps that I either a) can’t remove because Apple won’t let me, b) don’t currently use, but want to check out again if there’s an update, or c) don’t need to have access to by hitting the actual icon.

For example, I never use Voice Memos. Ever. So it’s on this page since I can’t actually delete it.

Part of the reason I keep Byline, Tweetie and Birdfeed here is because I want to be notified of updates to these apps so I can check them out. It’s a constant battle between Byline’s speed and Newsstand’s feature set; Tweetie’s speed, Twitterrific’s feature set and Birdfeed’s elegance, etc. Keeping them here keeps them out of the way, but I’ll still get notified when they get updated. Unfortunately Tweetie 2 will be an all new app so I won’t get notified when it’s updated. Regardless, I still use it on occasion — mostly to lament Twitterrific’s scrolling performance — so it stays on the phone.

Tweet Push sends me Notifications of @replies on Twitter and then launches my Twitter client of choice, so it can do its job perfectly well on the last page without getting in the way of anything. And since the Camera app is set to my double-tap Home button action, it can stay here and keep from taking up valuable space on another screen.

A Couple of Last Tips

If you use your phone a lot on the go and wear headphones, don’t forget that you get an extra button on the headphone wire. This is really handy since it can be used to control the iPod application in the background without leaving whatever other application you’re in. I use a Shure Music Phone Adapter with my SE-530s. It’s a bit cheap feeling but it gets the job done and adds the correct overall cable length when hooking it into the SE-530 cable without the extension cord.

Also, don’t forget, this is just a snapshot of what my apps look like today. One of the really important takeaways from this whole thing is that as apps move up (or down) in importance, their position in the shortcut hierarchy can change as well. For example, if I’m expecting a package or two, I might move the Deliveries app to the second page for easy access.

So far this is working quite well. If you have any other tips, I’d love to hear about them.