I did lots of research (as usual) and reading of reviews and it seemed Case-mate was one of the first to release a variety of cases specifically designed for the Verizon iPhone 4.  There are many different case styles but I don’t like to use a belt clip and prefer a case that has a combination of a solid spine (to protect from impact in case you drop it) but also has a rubber on the sides to help increase the grip to it doesn’t feel like it will slide out of your hand.  The Case-mate Pop case seemed to fit the bill – so I ordered one and in this video I show my unboxing as well as my review of this case.  Although I need to see if it stands the test of time so far I am VERY happy with this case and feel confident it will keep my precious iPhone 4 safe and sound.

Watch my video review and unboxing below:

What case did you pick for your iPhone and what do you like most about it?  Share your thoughts by posting a comment below!

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I have several different email addresses with different domains names all forwarding mail to Gmail and thanks to it’s flexibility I was able to configure Gmail so that I can send or reply from any of them (with one being the default address for new messages).  For example even though I use Gmail as my email program I rarely use my Gmail address – instead my FROM address is phil@theanywhereoffice.com.

Although Gmail handles this perfectly I was disappointed when first configured my iPod Touch a few years back using Google Sync that it ignored these settings and always sent mail from my Gmail address.  This was unacceptable to me as I wanted emails I sent to come from my business address and didn’t want to confuse my clients, customers, and colleagues.  I hunted and searched and tested and finally found out how to get this to work. You can still use the steps I shared in yesterday’s post/video to sync your Google Calendars and contacts with your iPhone but you need to turn off the mail option there and follow some special (and somewhat convoluted) steps to get the mail to sync with Gmail AND send from your own domain.

No worries – I’m here to help.  I recorded 2 videos for you below walking you step-by-step through the entire process. The first step would be to have mail from your other domain forward to your Gmail account. I assume you’re probably already doing this but if not you’ll need to go into your current email settings for your domain and set it to forward your mail to your Gmail account. The steps for this will vary depending on how you currently get your email – most likely these settings can be controlled in the control panel of your web or email host.

The next step is to configure Gmail to send mail from your own domain rather than using your Gmail address.  Watch this video to learn how to do this:

The final step is the tricky part – how to get your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to sync with Gmail and use your own domain.  Make sure to follow all the steps in the next video – there are a few gotcha’s (like one part where you have to set it up with your Gmail address, back out, then go back in and change it).  It sounds silly – but you have to do this to make it work. If you follow all these steps in my video you will reach nirvanna and have your Gmail perfectly in sync on your iPhone and be able to send and reply to messages using your own domain. Thing of beauty!!

(NOTE: I know you can use Google Apps to have all mail for your domain integrated with Gmail but for many small business and solo professionals you may prefer to not go through the steps of setting that up and simply use your regular Gmail account.  I actually used Google Apps and switched back to using my regular Gmail account.  I found it made it easier to use all the other Gmail services and often times new features were released to regular Gmail accounts long before Google Apps got them.  Not to mention the iGoogle pages for regular Gmail are MUCH better than those for Google Apps.  There are a lot more widgets available and if you use iGoogle as your startup page or a digital dashboard that definitely makes a difference!)

UPDATED (7/28/11) – HOW TO USE MULTIPLE FROM ADDRESSES:

Big thanks to Rafael who posted a comment below on how to configure your iPhone to support multiple FROM addresses (so if you have multiple email addresses you use you can have a choice which to use when sending).  Here is what you need to do to set that up:

1. Goto imap account information
2. At the address box type all your outgoing emails with a comma separator for example Aaa@domain.com,bbb@domain.com,you@gmail.com

This will add a from option when you create new email on the iPhone.

Awesome tip Rafael – what I love about the internet and huzzah to tribal knowledge and the great group we have here at The Anywhere Office!

Please leave me a comment below and let me know if my video walk-thru helped you out or if you have any questions.

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I have tried several different ways and found  Google Sync (which acts like a Microsoft Exchange connector) works great.  I used it for years on my iPod Touch and now that I’m the proud owner of a new Verizon iPhone 4 (I am stoked) I used this same method to keep my iPhone and Google services perfectly in sync. One of the great features is that it lets you sync multiple Google Calendars (up to 25). That means when you create a new appointment in the calendar on your iPhone you can add it to any of the Google calendars you have access to (your own or any shared calendars).

Watch my video below and follow along with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch as I show you how to sync your mail, contacts, and multiple Google calendars with your Apple device so you can send/receive mail, schedule appointments, and call any of your contacts from anywhere – instantly.  Now that’s The Anywhere Office in action!

Note that Google Sync is only supported on iOS versions 3.0 and above. You can check your current version by going to Settings > General > About > Version. If your business, school, or organization uses Google Apps, your administrator will first need to enable Google Sync before you can take advantage of this feature.

If you prefer written instructions Google provides them here but I figured it would be easier to follow along as you watch the steps in this video.

These steps work great if you are using your Gmail address as your primary email address.  If you prefer to send mail from your Gmail account (and your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch) using your own domain (ie I send email from @theanywhereoffice.com) then you will want to check out my next article and video where I’ll walk you through how to change the mail setup.  It’s tricky but I found a way to get it to work so stay tuned!

(BTW all the video of me configuring the iPhone was actually shot with the video camera on another iPhone – how cool is that!)

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I’ve always been someone who jumps on upgrades for software pretty much as soon as they come out.  I also try a lot of beta software – friends, colleagues, clients, and readers of this blog have come to trust  me to “test it all out” and then report back on what are the best programs, devices, and technology available.  I have to say however it was a mistake for me to upgrade my iPod Touch 2G to iOS4 the day it came out. I should have waited a few days and read about what others were experiencing as it would have saved me a lot of problems.

I was really excited about the new features in iOS4 and you have heard me mention here on this blog before that my iPod Touch has pretty much been my favorite piece of technology for the last few years.  It’s amazing and it just works – I travel without my laptop a lot more these day thanks to this handy little device.  In fact it has essentially acted as an Apple gateway drug making me want to switch from a PC to a MAC.

But my wonderful, joyful piece of technology was no longer bringing me as much joy after upgrading the firmware/software from 3.13 to iOS4. As it turns out many of the new features I was excited about (multitasking and screen rotation lock) were not supported on my older device. But worse was that the addition of persistent wi-fi when the device goes into sleep/standby mode was killing my battery.  Even when it was off in my pocket what used to last a few days was out of juice by the middle of a single day.  UNACCEPTABLE!

I also found using it just felt slow and sluggish and many of the apps were crashing – something I never experienced before. As I mentioned one of the reasons I love my iPod Touch is that it “just works” which has long been the mac fan mantra.

I searched around on the web and tried about a week ago to downgrade but it didn’t work.  I was stuck having to manually turn off the wi-fi by putting it into airplane mode when I wasn’t actively using it just to make my battery last throughout the day. I decided to wait for Apple to release a fix, patch, or official way to downgrade to the previous OS – but alas the 4.01 update was released today and it does not appear to address the horrendous battery drain or the slowness/crashing I have been experiencing.

So I decided to brave the downgrade again being I’m a techy and comfortable trying the various steps and methods I found. It took lots of Google searching, some sweat (when I thought I bricked it and couldn’t bring it back to life) and lots of swearing but I FINALLY was able to downgrade from iOS4 to 3.12 on my iPod touch.  I wanted to go to 3.13 but for some reason that was a no go. No major loss as 3.13 only contained minor updates from 3.12 – but I am still searching for a way to bring it back to the 3.13 software I had on it before I foolishly chose to upgrade to 4.  Here is what finally worked for me – I hope these steps and links will help you and others restore your iPod Touch or iPhone to the previous OS:

1. I primarily followed these instructions from LifeHacker http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g (which are for Mac or Windows users) however it didn’t work for me exactly as they suggested so I had to make a few changes.
2. One of the main things you need to do is put your device into what is called Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode in order to properly restore a previous OS/Firmware. To do this you follow some special instructions for how to power it up which they detailed nicely in the Lifehacker link above – they even include a video walkthrough.
3. In order to restore you need to download the previous firmware which you can find here http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware As I mentioned earlier I tried to restore to OS/firmware 3.13 (which was the latest before the release of iOS4) but I kept getting “error 3194″ after it would try to restore through iTunes.  I searched high and low on Google but none of the solutions I found others suggesting seemed to work until I found a few people mention they were able to successfully restore to 3.12.  I tried that and it did the trick! You might want to try 3.13 first so you can have the most up to date software – but if that doesn’t work try 3.12 like I did. (IMPORTANT - Make sure you download the right firmware for your device from the link in this step.  They have various versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch).
4. After you successfully restore the previous OS you need to use a program called RecBoot to kick your iPhone/iPod Touch out of recovery mode. You can download the latest version of RecBoot from here http://www.sebby.net/443-recboot-final-release/
5. On a windows computer in order to run RecBoot successfully you need to install something called LibUSB which are special drivers for your USB ports.  The first time around I had trouble doing this and got very confused until I found this great blog post with a YouTube video that did the trick http://windows7kb.com/windows-7-videos/how-to-install-libusb-on-windows-vista-64-bit/ I am running Windows 7 64-bit but I believe these steps are exactly the same for 32-bit you just download a different version of LibUSB. It also says in the readme file that you need to download “iTunesMobileDevice.dll” and put this folder in the same folder that RECBOOT is in.  The Readme file that comes with RecBoot gives you a link where you can download this file.

One odd thing was that the LifeHacker instructions state you need to use RecBoot to kick your device OUT of DFU/Restore mode.  When I was wrestling with the 3.13 OS this didn’t seem to work for me and I started sweating bullets as my device would not turn on and seemed to be stuck in restore mode with a black screen.  I tried it several times to no avail – however once I successfully restored the 3.12 OS it seemed to kick itself out of restore mode without the use of the Recboot software.  But I can’t say you don’t need it as I had to try several attempts to get this to work so I’m it’s possible that some of the earlier steps I took while following the “official” Lifehacker instructions might have had some effect on my solution.

CAUTION - I highly recommend you read all the steps and download all of the files you need BEFORE proceeding with these steps.  Be sure to review the readme files that might come with any of the downloads. Also if you are using a Windows Computer you will want to create a RESTORE POINT before installing LibUSB or any of this software.  This will allow you to roll your computer back to the state it was in before you installed the drivers and/or software.  If you are unsure how to do this here are step-by-step instructions for creating a restore point in Windows XP or Windows Vista/7. This is good general advice any time you are installing new software or hardware or monkeying with your system.

The only downside in all of this was that after restoring the firmware and my iPod Touch Backup (the one it made by itself before I upgraded to iOS4) none of my apps, music, or videos were restored.  It wasn’t too much of a hassle however because iTunes had all that in place so all I had to do was drag whatever movies and music I wanted back onto my iPod Touch and then check the boxes for the apps I wanted to resync.  It was actually helpful as I had a lot of apps installed I was no longer using so I didn’t bother to restore many of them which freed up more space on my 16GB iPod Touch. One sync with iTunes later and all was right again!

In order to test that my battery life was back to normal I left my fully charged iPod Touch unplugged next to my bed when I went to sleep last night without turning wi-fi off.  Upon waking I smiled as I saw that I still had a full charge. Under iOS 4 I was often greeted by a message in the morning that I needed to charge my device even though it was sitting on my night table unused.

There were a few features in iOS4 I found useful including the spell checker, the updates to email which showed threaded messages much like Gmail, and the improved search feature – but I was perfectly happy with my iPod Touch before I had those features and it is much more important to me that it has good battery life and doesn’t crash as I use it frequently throughout the day.

Hopefully Apple will release a future update (4.1) that will fix these issues and perhaps give us an option to turn off the persistent wi-fi feature to conserve battery life.  I wish they had released an official “downgrade patch” that would allow us to easily roll our devices back to the previous OS if we were unhappy with iOS4 – but for now if you want to go back – follow my steps above and hopefully my wrestling with this will save you some time.  If you have any questions about these steps or thoughts on iOS4 of downgrading please post a comment below.

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In fact, it’s probably one of the main reasons for me planning to switch from a PC to a Mac soon.  I don’t have to troubleshoot it, almost never reboot it, it doesn’t get hung up or give me dll errors – the damn thing just works – and it’s FUN!

When they released the 3.0 OS upgrade for it last year I was really stoked for a few of the features – but mostly for the copy and paste.  That was a huge productivity booster.  Well this summer I have OS 4.0 to look forward too and once again there will be some big time savers. Here is a look at some of the main new features:

iPhone OS 4.0: The Web Working Benefits

This time around I think it’s the folders to group my apps into that will bring me the biggest boost.  I download lots of apps to test (which I’ll be reviewing soon here on the blog) and tons of games for my son.  The quick search they introduced in 3.0 made finding things a lot easier – but being able to group related apps together will be sweet! Also the new multitasking looks great but I will have to see how it’s implemented.

Are you an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad user? What are you most looking forward to in the new OS or what features/functions do you wish Apple would add? Post a comment below and let me know.

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This article shares some eye-opening stats and graphs from Morgan Stanley analysts showing the most important online trends:

Mobile Web Will Rule by 2015

Here are a few highlights:

• Video accounts for 69% of mobile data traffic.
• Facebook is the single largest repository for user-generated content such as pics, videos, links and comments.
• Apple and Android platforms are gaining in the mobile OS market, while Windows Mobile, RIM and Palm decline.
• If Skype were a telecommunications carrier, it would be the largest carrier in the world, with 521 million registered users.
• The average iPhone user only spends 45% of his on-device time making voice calls.

OK – put your futurist hats on . . . what do you think will be the biggest changes or technology in the next 5 years? Post a comment below and let us know!

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One tool we all use constantly is voicemail.  It makes me crazy when someone leaves me a voicemail and doesn’t tell me what they want or rushes through their phone number so I have to replay the message several times just to write it down.  When I leave a message I am always sure to speak slowly and repeat my name and number at the beginning and the end of the message.  I also make sure to let the person I’m calling know what I need or why I’m calling.  Something as small as this can cut down on a lot of wasted time and unecessary phone tag.

Today I discovered Jason Seiden’s blog and an excellent video he posted on voice mail etiquette.

Jason hit the nail right on the head here and I’m looking forward to exploring his blog further!

What do you do to be a more conscious communicator?  Post a comment below and share your personal guidelines.

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Watch this short video to learn more about how I took The Anywhere Office with me and was able to work from anywhere while traveling lighter than ever before!

Two things I forgot to mention in the video . . . The reason I have an iPod Touch and not an iPhone is because I refuse to switch from Verizon to AT&T as my cellphone provider.  I have been a loyal Verizon customer for years for two main reasons – excellent signal (I can make and receive calls from just about anywhere and almost never have a dropped call) and great customer service (sadly almost unheard of today).  The minute Apple gets smart and moves away from their exclusive deal with AT&T and brings the iPhone (or some variation of it) to Verizon I will be the first one in line to get one!

Also one additional app I use on my iPod Touch that really helped me stay in touch was Yahoo Messenger.  Yahoo is the main IM service I use and I was able to seamlessly stay connected using my iPod Touch so I didn’t miss any messages from my family, friends, and colleagues – simply awesome.

BTW – I shot this video using my new Flip UltraHD camcorder and the Gorilla Tripod – 2 more great portable pieces of technology I have!

Comment below and let me know what is the key technology you use to stay connected when on the road.

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In my experience when it comes to smartphones and work/life balance I think a lot of the pros/cons are about how a person uses a tool such as this. Like any technology you have to know when to turn it off and setup personal guidelines for how to use it.

These communication guidelines should be clearly explained to others you work with as well. Sometimes people think because you have a smartphone that gives you almost instant access to email you should be replying to every message within minutes regardless of what time of day it is.

I am a proponent of “work/life integration” as I believe balance can be difficult to achieve at times – but tools such as smartphones and other new communication tools make it easier to integrate work into your life. So if that means you have to do a bit of work on your vacation – but instead you get to take vacations you couldn’t take before – in my opinion that is a win.

That being said I still think it’s important to block out dedicated time away from work where you can focus on family, friends, relaxation, and personal development without the distractions.

I often joke about our company website being YouCanWorkFromAnywhere.com NOT “You Should Work From Everywhere”. That’s how I weigh in on this issue. Please share your comments below as I am eager to see your thoughts on this topic.

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