Alex Ibrado

Poor Man's Wi-Drive

The Kingston Wi-Drive sounds like an easy way to give more bytes to storage-starved iOS devices. Unfortunately, at $130 for 16GB and $175 for 32GB, it's not so easy on the wallet.

If you already use an Android phone as your WiFi Access Point ("Personal Hotspot"), you're in luck. Simply install a file sharing server, such as DavDrive Lite (free), on your Android phone, and the appropriate client, such as WebDAV Navigator (also free), on your iOS device. Connect via WiFi to the Android phone as usual, then use WebDAV Navigator to open the URL shown in DavDrive Lite (using the specified credentials), and you're good to go!  

Since WebDAV is an industry standard, you can also access the shared files in any operating system with a WebDAV client. In a pinch, even an ordinary web browser would do.

Personally, my setup is the non-lite DavDrive at €0.99 (~PHP 60) and Air Sharing Pro ($6.99) which I already purchased previously. 

FYI, a 16 GB MicroSDHC at CDR King is about P1,300 (when in stock); a 32 GB card will set you back PHP 3,580.

 

(download)

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Real Gmail push notifications and sync for iOS

I don't know how I missed it, but you can get real push notifications and proper Contacts/Calendar sync with Gmail/Google Apps on your iOS device (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad) -- just use a Microsoft Exchange profile when you setup your account. Instructions here.

After you do that, your Mail icon badge (the number in the little red circle) will update as soon as new mail comes into any of your configured mail accounts -- you don't need a specialized notifier app just for this. Also, your Contacts and Calendar will be perfectly synchonized with your Google accounts.

n.b. Yahoo! mail already has push built-in.

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