Chapter 5. Surf the Web and Manage Email On the Touch

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You’ll learn to:

  • Get your Touch online

  • Use Safari’s new features

  • Create and sync bookmarks

  • Post links to Facebook and Twitter

  • Write, send, and recieve email

  • Set up an iCloud account

IF YOU HAVE AN iPod Touch, you know that it can download and run apps from the App Store (Chapter 6). But your Touch comes with a preinstalled app that, in terms of cool factor, is the equal of anything you can find in Apple’s online emporium: Safari, Apple’s versatile web browser, scaled down and redesigned for your Touch. Safari lets you comfortably surf the World Wide Web from wherever you can hop onto a WiFi connection.

You may already use Safari on your Mac, so using it on your Touch will feel familiar. But browsing on the Touch is a little different from surfing on a full-size computer screen, with little being the operative word here. Never fear—this chapter shows you the techniques, tips, and tricks you need to get big results out of that small window to the Web.

Surfing with Safari isn’t the only advantage of a WiFi-enabled Touch. You can use Apple’s free online storage locker, iCloud, to keep your contacts, calendars, and other personal information in sync across your computer and all your devices running iOS 5 and later.

Get Your WiFi Connection

TO JUMP ONTO THE Web with your Touch, you first need to get connected to the Internet. That’s pretty easy, thanks to the sheer abundance of wireless networks these days—in homes, coffee shops, airports, hotels, college campuses, libraries, and more. WiFi, like love, is all around.

WiFi is geekspeak for wireless fidelity, a networking technology that lets you connect to the Internet over radio waves instead of wires. Also known as 802.11, it’s the same technology that lets desktop PCs, laptops, game consoles, and other devices connect to the Web over the air. When you come across a network you can tap into, you’ve found what’s called a WiFi hotspot.

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Odds are you jumped on your home WiFi network when you activated your brand-new Touch (Set Up and Activate Your Touch). If you didn’t, here’s what to do:

  1. Fire up a ’Net-needy app like Safari or Mail. Your iPod scans the airwaves for a WiFi signal and presents you with a list of available networks. If you don’t get one, tap Home→Settings→Wi-Fi→On.

  2. In the “Select a Wi-Fi Network” box, tap the name of the network you want to join.

  3. If you select one with a small lock icon () next to its name, you need a password to join it. Type in the password when the Touch prompts you (on the next screen), and you’re ready to start surfing. The icon at the top of the Touch means you’re network-connected.

Thankfully, the Touch remembers your network name and password. So if it detects a previously used network that’s up, running, and in range, it jumps back onto that network without fuss, and the icon at the top of your screen confirms your connection.

If the Touch can’t find a previous network, it pops up the “Select a Wi-Fi Network” screen again, listing nearby hotspots, and you start the first-time connection dance all over again. See the next page for directions.

At home and confused about why your own network didn’t link your Touch (review your typing) or isn’t showing up in the list of hotspots? Check your network’s modem and wireless router (the box with the blinking lights that broadcasts the network signal from your modem) to make sure everything’s working.

Find More Hotspots

The Touch is great at suggesting nearby networks, and you may quickly find one you can join. But you’ll see only a couple of them in the “Select a Wi-Fi Network” box, usually the ones with the strongest signal and no password requirement—the iPod tries to provide a solid, simple connection.

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While that keeps the list short and tidy (especially in big cities with lots of networks), it’s not the full list of nearby nets. And the list also doesn’t show hidden networks, where the owner has decided to not publicly broadcast the network’s name for security reasons.

To see a list of all nearby visible networks, go to the iPod’s Home screen and tap Settings→Wi-Fi. On the list that comes up, tap the name of the network you want to join.

Don’t see the network you want in the list? Odds are it’s one of those “hidden” ones. Tap Other and move on to the next screen. In the box, type in the exact name of the network. You also need to know the type of security the network uses (like WPA2 or WEP; you may have to ask the owner, if that’s not you) and its password so you can join your pal’s network for gaming or other WiFi fun.

Use Commercial Hotspots

Although your home and office WiFi networks are free, that’s not always the case when you’re on the go. Airports, hotels, and other places offer commercial hotspots. When you try to join one of these pay-to-play networks, you get a screen requesting your billing information before you can do anything online. (Before you start typing, make sure you’re in a legitimate hotspot by checking the network name posted in the hotel room or airport waiting area. Fake hotspots are out there, so be careful.)

If you travel a lot, getting a long-term, discounted account with a hotspot vendor like Boingo, T-Mobile, or AT&T may save you money in the long run.

Tip

Tired of the Touch bugging you to join hotspots when you don’t need to—or even want to? From the Home screen, tap Settings→Wi-Fi. At the bottom of the screen, tap the Off button next to “Ask to Join Networks.” You can reverse this process later if you decide you do want to be ’Net-connected.

Take a Safari Tour

READY TO SURF? ON the Touch, Safari is your on-ramp to the Web. By default, it occupies the third icon on the Home screen’s bottom row (below left), but you can put it anywhere (The Home Button and Home Screen). The first time you tap open Safari, a blank browser window appears (below middle). Tap its address bar to summon the Touch keyboard (below right) so you can type in a Web address. Once you do, hit the keyboard’s blue Go button to jump to that site.

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So how do you use Safari once you get out on the Web? Here’s a guided tour of the program’s bars and buttons, starting from the upper-left:

  • Address bar. As shown in action on the right-most screen above, this narrow strip of typeable turf is where you enter a page’s web address (also known as its URL or Uniform Resource Locator—a term that dates back to the early days of the Web, when programmers and scientists were its big users.)

  • , (Stop, Reload). See a typo after you enter an address or change your mind about going to a site? Click the button in the address bar to stop loading the page-in-progress.

Note

The iPod Touch runs pretty much the same operating system (OS) as the iPhone, and Apple usually releases OS updates a few times a year. While some updates are simply security fixes, the company does occasionally make bigger overhauls, like redesigning the Safari interface. If your copy of Safari doesn’t look exactly like the one pictured here, odds are you’re running a version of the Touch’s OS released before or after iPhone/iPod Touch OS 6.0.1. You can see what flavor OS you have by tapping Home→Settings→General→About→Version.

After you tap Go, a Blue Progress Bar of Loading displays the page’s download status. Once the page appears on-screen, Safari converts that button to a . Tap this circular-arrow icon to reload the page if, say, you’re checking sports scores or election results and want the absolute latest news—or if the page doesn’t look right and you want to download it again.

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  • Search box. The lilliput search box in the upper-right corner of the screen is now a staple of most desktop browsers, and mini-Safari follows suit. Tap the box and type in your keywords, and then tap the blue Search button that appears in the bottom-right corner. (See Change Your Default Search Engine to select a search engine—you have your choice of Google, Yahoo Search, or Microsoft Bing.)

  • , (Back, Forward). The first two icons on Safari’s bottom toolbar let you navigate backward and forward through the pages you visit during an Internet session. Tap to go back to the page you were just on. When you do that, you now have the option to return to the page you just left with a tap of the button.

  • (Share menu). Tap here to do one of nine things. You can bookmark the current page, add the page to your Reading List for later consumption, or add a shortcut to that page on your Home screen. If you’re in a sharing mood, you can also send a link to the page in an email message (which brings up the Touch’s mail app with the link already embedded) or a message over Apple’s iMessage network, share it with your Facebook or Twitter pals, or print out a copy with your AirPrint-compatible printer. Use the Safari Action/Share Menu explains this menu in detail.

  • (Bookmarks). By tapping this icon, you can see all the bookmarks you’ve added to the Touch (Edit and Organize Bookmarks and Folders), along with any you synced over from your desktop or laptop computer (Sync Bookmarks with iTunes).

  • , (Pages). You’re not stuck with just one active web page at a time, and this icon (in the bottom-right corner) tells you how many pages you currently have open. See Use Multiple Web Pages for more on multiple web pages.

Zoom and Scroll Web Pages

WHEN THE IPHONE AND iPod Touch first appeared in 2007, many new owners spent hours zooming and scrolling through web pages because it was cool, fun, and novel. It was also useful, because a lot of websites hadn’t yet developed easy-to-read mobile versions of their sites, with type and graphics designed to maximize readability on the small screen (see RSS Feeds and Mobile-Friendly Sites).

Thanks to the global invasion of smartphones, many sites have jumped on the mobile bandwagon, so the problem isn’t so bad anymore. But even when a site offers a mobile edition, you sometimes need to see the full-size version. Happily, when you type in the address of a “desktop” website today, the Touch scrunches down the site’s pages into palm-size replicas.

So now you can see a whole web page at once, but can you read it? Probably not, unless you have extremely good (even microscopic) vision. Here’s where Safari on the Touch shows its versatility, because it offers multiple ways to make that page readable:

  • Rotate the Touch. Need just a bit of a size boost? Turn the Touch 90 degrees to the left or the right so you get a wider viewing window, which is known by its formal name, landscape mode.

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  • Zoom and pinch. Place your thumb and forefinger (or whichever fingers you prefer) together on the screen and slowly spread them apart to zoom in on (enlarge) the part of the page between your fingers. To go in the opposite direction and reduce the size of the selected area, move your spread fingers closer together in a pinch formation (the same way you harassed your siblings in the back of the car on family vacations).

  • Double-tap. Web pages are made up of different sections, and Safari can isolate each one and magnify just that part. Find the section of a page you want to read and double-tap it to expand it to the width of the Touch’s screen. Double-tap the area again to reduce the section to its original size.

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When you zoom in on a page and want to read a part that’s out of view, simply drag your finger on the glass to pull that section to the center. You can also scroll around a page quickly by flicking your finger. As your finger flies around, you’ll pass over links, but Safari knows you’re in transit and doesn’t open them. To actually click a link, stop scrolling and tap the link with your finger.

Tip

Ever hit one of those page-within-a-page situations (also known as a frame), where the inner window has its own scroll bar but you can’t scroll inside it without scrolling the outer page? Don’t you just hate that? Never fear, Safari Touch can handle it. Just place two fingers on the frame and gently drag them up or down to scroll through just that part of the page.

Surf with Safari

USING SAFARI ON YOUR Touch, you can freely roam around the Web in several ways:

  • Typing. As mentioned earlier, you can go to just about any page on the Web as long as you can type in its address correctly.

  • Bookmarks. These shortcuts to favorite sites work like they do on desktop and laptop PCs, except that you tap them instead of clicking them.

  • History. Yes, Safari for the Touch keeps a record of your page-browsing activity. It’s in the History folder under the Bookmarks icon, and you can easily tap your way to a page from your recent past.

  • Links. It wouldn’t be the Web without links. And all you need to do is tap.

The next few pages look into each of these surfing moves in detail, but first consider the address bar—and its handy shortcuts:

  • Jump back to the top. No matter how many miles down a page you’ve scrolled, you can quickly bop back up to the top by tapping the Touch’s black status bar, the one with the clock and battery icon on it. That brings you to the top of the page and to Safari’s address bar, where you can type in a fresh address to surf to another site.

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  • Delete an address all at once. You don’t have to hold down the delete key to whack a web address so you can type in a fresh one—just tap the button at the right end of the bar to obliterate the address. To get to the icon (and pull up the keyboard), tap inside the address bar.

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    In recent versions of the iPod Touch software, tapping the URL inside the address bar also brings up the Select and Select All buttons so you can copy a web address to the Touch’s clipboard (Chapter 4). Once you do that, you’ll see a Paste button.

  • Don’t over-type. As with most modern browsers, you can skip pecking out http:// and .com in web addresses, since Safari is savvy enough to stick those on for you. So, instead of typing http://www.amazon.com, just type amazon and hit Go. (If you need the suffix .net, .edu, .org, or .us, press and hold the .com button and slide across to the suffix you need, as shown at right.)

If you flipped immediately to this chapter because you wanted to start using Safari to roam the Web as soon as possible, flip back to Chapter 4 for tips and tricks on using the Touch keyboard for browsing, email, and other typey tasks.

Create and Use Safari Bookmarks

YOU CAN ADD BROWSER bookmarks to Safari for the Touch two ways: right from the Touch as you search, surf, and discover new places around the Web, or by syncing your desktop bookmarks with the Touch (flip ahead to Sync Bookmarks with iTunes to do that).

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No matter how you save ’em, you find your Touch’s bookmarks in the same place: tap at the bottom of the Safari screen.

Depending on how you organize your web addresses, you may see a collection of single bookmarks (as shown at right), or you may see them grouped into folders, just as you had them in your desktop browser. Tap a folder to open it, and then tap a bookmark inside to visit the corresponding site.

Add a New Bookmark

To add a cool new site to your Bookmarks list, tap the icon at the bottom of the screen, and then tap the Bookmark icon. On the Add Bookmark screen, you have these choices:

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  • Rename it. Some websites have hideously long names, like “Uncle Earl’s Good-Time Five-String Finger-Pickin’ Jam Session,” but you can change that. Tap the top box on the Add Bookmark screen and rename the site to something shorter, like “Banjos.”

    The box right below that—which you can’t mess with—displays the site’s official web address.

  • File it. The third box down lets you file a bookmark in a folder (see opposite page). Tap the Bookmarks link to open Safari’s list of bookmark folders. When you find the one you want, tap the folder’s name to deposit your bookmark there.

The menu also offers an Add to Home Screen option. Tap that icon and you get an icon on your Touch Home screen to take you back to the site.

Edit and Organize Bookmarks and Folders

SAFARI LISTS BOOKMARKS IN the order in which you save them, and that may not be the easiest way to find them. Touch Safari is ready for this inevitability, as well as the probability that you’d like to delete old bookmarks every once in a while.

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Editing your bookmarks and bookmark folders is quick and efficient on the Touch. To do either, tap the button and then tap Edit. To edit bookmarks inside a folder, tap , tap open the target folder, and then tap Edit. Here’s what you can do with the bookmarks and folders:

  • Delete them. When it’s time for that bookmark or folder to go, tap the button, and then tap Delete to confirm. (You can’t delete the History folder, however.)

  • Edit them. Need to rename a bookmark or folder? To edit a bookmark, tap it to get to the Edit Bookmark screen, where you can change its name and address. Tap a folder to get to the Edit Folder screen so you can change the folder’s name. Tap the Bookmarks button in the upper-left corner when you’re done.

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  • File/refile them. To make, name, and file a new folder, tap the New Folder button in the upper-left corner of the Edit screen, then name the folder and tap Bookmarks to file it. You move an existing folder by tapping it, tapping Bookmarks on the Edit Folder screen, and then choosing a new location.

  • Rearrange them. Need a new order for your bookmarks or folders? As shown at right, drag the grip strip () up or down the list to move them to a new place. (You can’t move the History folder, however.)

Tap when you finish.

Sync Bookmarks with iTunes

OVER THE YEARS, YOU’VE probably built up a considerable collection of bookmarks on your desktop and laptop computers. In fact, you’re probably very attached to some of those links. The good news is you can take them with you—at least on the iPod Touch.

To copy your entire Internet Explorer or Safari bookmark library from your computer to your Touch, all you need to do is turn on a checkbox in iTunes. Connect your iPod, click its icon in the iTunes window, and click the Info button at the top of the screen. Scroll down past things you can sync, like contacts, calendars, and mail accounts, until you get to the section called Other. Now, do the following, depending on the type of computer you have:

  • Windows PCs: Turn on “Sync bookmarks with” and then choose either Internet Explorer (or Safari, if you still have the discontinued PC version installed) from the menu. Click Apply or Sync.

  • Macs: Turn on “Sync Safari bookmarks” and then click Apply or Sync.

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If you use Mozilla’s Firefox browser, drop into the App Store (Chapter 6) and search for “Firefox.” You can find mini-programs, like Firefox Home, Mozilla’s own free app, to port your Firefox faves over to the Touch.

Any bookmarks you create on your iPod can make the trip back to your computer when you sync, too. But if things start to get too messy on the Touch, you can wipe out all its bookmarks and start over. In iTunes, scroll down to the Info screen’s Advanced area (under “Replace information on this iPod”) and turn on the checkbox next to Bookmarks. Click Apply or Sync to have iTunes replace all the bookmarks on the Touch with those from your computer.

The Safari History List

THE HISTORY BUTTON ON desktop browsers has saved many a soul who can’t remember the name of that really informative site from the other day. Safari on the Touch doesn’t let you forget your history, either (well, not without some work), and it, too, keeps a list of the sites you’ve surfed recently.

To see your web trail, tap and then tap the History folder, where Safari collects your past sites in tidy subfolders with names like “Yesterday.” Tap a bookmark within one of the subfolders to go back in time—or at least back to that site. The link won’t be in the History folder forever (time does march on, and so does the History list), so you may want to bookmark it for real before it slips away.

Erase the History List

Don’t want to leave a record of your browsing history in case someone picks up your Touch? One way to prevent that is to set up a Passcode Lock. Then, anyone who wants to get into your Touch will need a four-digit code to unlock the screen; see What’s in the Settings Menu for more.

Another way to clean up after yourself is to erase your whole History list. To do that, open the History folder (below left), tap the Clear button in the bottom-left corner (below middle), and then tap the Clear History button (below right). You’ve just wiped away History. Many politicians are probably envious.

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LINKS ON THE TOUCH work just like links on any other computer, except that on the Touch, you tap a link with your finger instead of clicking it with your mouse. While websites traditionally display links in blue, that’s not always the case—you can find links of just about any color online, and oftentimes pictures, logos, and other graphics turn out to be links as well.

If you want to know where a link points to before you click it (not a bad idea in these days of rampant bad behavior and evildoing on the Web), hold your finger on the link for a second or two. A box like the one below-right slides up, offering you four options: open the page right away, open the page in a new window (“Open in New Page”) so you can switch back and forth among pages, add the page to your Reading List (see Use Safari Reader and Reading List), and copy the link.

If you prefer to keep your original pages on-screen when you click links, you can tell Safari to open new pages in the background, where you can find them later by tapping the icon. To do that, tap Settings→Safari→Open Links→In Background. When you do, the pop-up menu options change accordingly.

Want to stash the linked page away for later? Tap Add to Reading List. The Copy option lets you paste the link into a Notes document so you can save it (Notes, Weather, Stocks, and Calculator) or pop it into an email message so you can share it. Speaking of email, when you tap a link in a Touch mail message (Use Email on the Touch), Mail closes and Safari opens to take you the site. Yes, these hyperlinks are a pretty nifty invention.

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RSS Feeds and Mobile-Friendly Sites

AS COOL AS TOUCH Safari is about showing you full websites on a tiny screen (well, except for sites that use Adobe Flash, an interactive technology the Touch doesn’t support), they can sometimes be a lot of work to read. That’s especially true if you just want to get a quick look at the news or find out the basics of a story. That’s where two really wonderful parts of the Web come in: RSS feeds and mobile-friendly sites. Here’s how to use both:

RSS Feeds

Depending on which nerd you’re taking to, RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. No matter what you call it, RSS is a fabulous technology for your Touch (or any mobile device with a browser). It lets you subscribe to short text dispatches called feeds sent out by thousands of sites and news sources around the world.

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Feeds, like the one shown at right, provide a linked headline and a short summary of the related story. In iOS 6, you can read RSS feeds with services like Google Reader (shown at right). If you want better graphics and more control, you can also buy, download, and install an RSS app like the free Feedler or the $5 NewsRack. With an RSS feed, there are no ads, flashing banners, or dancing hamsters clogging up the works—just straightforward text. When you want to read more about a story, tap its link.

Mobile-Friendly Sites

Many major news organizations and other companies have noticed that this whole smartphone/mobile browser thing has caught on with the public, and they offer versions of their sites optimized for the small screen, using smaller graphics and bigger type. These sites save time since you don’t have to constantly pinch and zoom to see what’s on the page.

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When you surf on the Touch, you’ll likely get served up the mobile edition of a site automatically. If that doesn’t happen, try exchanging the www in the URL with an m, as in m.cnn.com. (The m stands for mobile.) When you land on a mobile site, your eyes will be much happier.

Search the Web

IMAGINE TRYING TO FIND anything on the Web without search. At more than 10 billion indexed pages and counting (according to www.worldwidewebsize.com), the Web would be a pretty hard place to pinpoint information unless you knew exactly where to find it. And how many of us can say that?

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Fortunately, the Web offers search engines. And fortunately for iPod Touch owners, three of them are built right into Safari. You can use any one as your Sherlock of the ’Net.

The next page explains how to set your default search engine, but no matter which one you use, they work the same way. To search the Web, tap the search box on the upper-right side of the Safari window and then, when the keyboard appears, type in your keywords. Tap the blue Search button in the bottom-right corner to start the hunt.

Mobile web search has come a long way since 2007, when the original iPhone and iPod Touch hit the scene; back then, their browsers didn’t even have a search box. Nowadays, many search engines come in mobile-friendly versions that round up not just general results, but news stories, video clips, and images. As you can see below, Google and Bing let you tap different tabs on the search results page (or under the menu on the Yahoo screen) to see the various types of information the search engine has thoughtfully rounded up.

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Change Your Default Search Engine

Google is the default search engine for many people, both at the desk and on the go, but it’s not like you have to use it. Yahoo and Microsoft also offer smooth-running engines that can bring back slightly different results from what the Big Goog might give you. In the case of search, the more choices, the better, and you can change things up any time you want by switching Safari’s default search engine.

To try Yahoo Search or Microsoft Bing (or to go back to Google if you switched before), visit the Home screen and tap Settings→Safari→Search Engine. On the Search Engine screen (shown bottom-right), tap the name of the service you’d like to use.

Tap the Safari button in the top-left corner to go back to the previous screen to adjust other settings (like turning on the Autofill feature that lets Safari automatically fill in your contact info and user name and password on web forms), or press the Home button to bail out of the Settings area and get back to surfing.

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Tip

Search engines do more than find web pages—they can also act as electronic crib sheets for quick data points. Need the weather forecast for Boston? Type weather 02114 into the search box. Movies in Manhattan? Type movies 10018. You can also get stock quotes by typing in a company’s ticker symbol, unit conversions (kilometers in 6 miles), and dictionary definitions (define bildungsroman).

Use the Safari Action/Share Menu

IT MAY NOT BE obvious at first, but Safari in iOS 6 is a very sharing web browser—just tap the Action/Share menu icon () in the Safari toolbar and see for yourself. Here’s what each does with the web page currently open:

  • Mail. Tap here to fire off a link to the page by email.

  • Message. Tap this icon to send a friend a link to the story over the iMessage network (Use Messages).

  • Twitter. Tap the birdie to share the page’s link in a tweet to your Twitter followers (Add Twitter and Facebook Accounts).

  • Facebook. Tap this icon to post a link to the article on your Facebook page.

  • Add to Home Screen. Tap here to make a bookmark icon on the Home screen.

  • Print. Need hardcopy? Tap here to send the page to your AirPrint-compatible printer (Print from Your Touch) and output a version on treeware.

  • Copy. Tap the Copy button to paste the link into a text app like Notes.

  • Bookmark. Tap here to make a regular Safari bookmark (Create and Use Safari Bookmarks).

  • Add to Reading List. Tap here to save the page so you can read it later, as the next page explains.

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Use Safari Reader and Reading List

LIKE TO READ? THE Touch software brings a couple of treats to Safari for serious browsers of the Web: Reader and Reading list. Here’s what each one does:

Reader

Hate web pages full of distracting graphics and ads? The iPod Touch has a wonderful feature called Safari Reader that works with many sites (but not all) around the Web. Like its cousin-in-code for the desktop, Safari Reader strips away all the distracting and nonessential graphics and other elements on a page, and presents that article in a nice, easy-to-read format. It’s like a pair of comfy slippers for your eyes.

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To tell if a web page supports Safari Reader, look up in the address bar for a icon. If you see one, tap it. Like magic, the distracting ads melt away, and only the essential text and images appear front-and-center. You can even adjust the font size in the Reader version of a page by tapping the icon until you’re satisfied with the way things look. Under the menu, you find options for mailing and printing the page in the sleek, streamlined Reader format. Tap Done to return to the page’s regular view.

Reading List

No time (at the time) to read? When you’re browsing around in Safari and find an article that you just don’t have time to fully explore, tap and choose Add to Reading List. That saves the article to your personal reading list in your browser, where it waits for you.

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Later, when you have time to read, tap and choose Reading List from the menu. You see a tidy set of all your saved articles.

To read one, tap its entry. Safari divides the Reading List into two parts, All and Unread. All, as you may have guessed, shows every article you added to the list. Unread shows just the stories you haven’t opened yet. As you open, read, and move on with each saved article, the link for it automatically moves from the Unread list to the All list—saving you the trouble of remembering what you have and haven’t read.

Use Multiple Web Pages

TABBED BROWSERS, LIKE INTERNET Explorer and Firefox, have changed the way people surf. If you need to compare two pages or flip back and forth between them, you no longer have to open them in two separate windows. Tabs let you easily click back and forth between pages using the same window, making your own personal space-time continuum much more efficient.

Safari on the iPod Touch gives you a variation on that concept. You can push older pages off to the side when you need to open a new one but still have both within a finger’s reach. Here’s what you can do:

  • Open a new page. Need to check something on another site? Tap the button in the lower-right corner of Safari and your current page shrinks into the background. Tap New Page in the lower-left corner to get a fresh blank page to address. You can open up to eight pages this way. To see how many pages you have open at once, check the icon, which now has a tiny number inside it. If you see , for example, you have three pages open.

  • Switch to another open page. Go back and tap again. See those dots (•••) underneath the mini-page (circled)? The number of dots equals the number of web pages you have open, with the white dot highlighting the current page. Flick through and tap a mini-page to expand it full-screen.

  • Close a page. Tap that useful icon again and flick to the mini-page you’re ready to close. Then tap the button in the top-left corner.

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Use iCloud Tabs

THE WORLD WIDE WEB is more than 20 years old now, and there’s still no shortage of things to read on it. The only shortage you may find is time—as in no time to read all this cool stuff online. Thanks to the new iCloud Tabs feature in iOS 6, though, you might be able to squeeze in a little more reading wherever you happen to be by spreading it out among multiple devices.

That’s because the latest version of Apple’s Safari browser keeps tabs on your tabs (no matter what device you’re using to read web pages at the moment) and syncs them across all your compatible iOS devices and Macs hooked into the same iCloud account. So you can start reading a long article on your iPod Touch at home, pick it up on your iPad on the train to work, and finish it on your iPhone while waiting to pick up pizza for dinner.

To use iCloud Tabs, you need:

  • An iPod Touch, iPad, or iPhone running iOS 6, or a Mac running OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and the latest version of the Safari browser.

  • An iCloud account.

  • A WiFi connection.

When you have tabs open in Safari on one device, tap and then tap the iCloud Tabs folder to see a list of the tabs you have open on your other connected devices. Tap a tab in the list to call it up on your current screen. Now, isn’t that a lot easier than emailing links to yourself?

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Play Online Audio and Video

IN THE EARLY DAYS of the Touch, streaming audio and video from the Internet was an exercise in frustration, mainly because many sites used media formats, like RealPlayer and Flash, that the Touch couldn’t play. While there are still plenty of sites that don’t work with mobile Safari, more and more do. And on its own, the Touch can play MP3, WAV, and QuickTime audio files right off the Web. It also plays QuickTime movies in certain formats, like H.264.

Here are a few audio news sites that play well with Safari on the Touch:

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  • BBC News. The Beeb’s podcasts stream nicely, and you can search shows by radio station, genre, or get an A-to-Zed list. www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/

  • National Public Radio. This is a whole page of news shows and podcasts that start streaming when you tap the Listen link; you can also get NPR’s official apps as well. www.npr.org

But you’re not just stuck with Safari—you can stream audio or video through apps like the ones below, all available in the App Store (Chapter 6):

  • Last.fm. With a free account and the free Last.fm app from the App Store, you can build your own streaming radio station. www.last.fm

  • Pandora Radio. Another option for personalized radio, also with its own desktop site and App Store offering, Pandora analyzes your music taste and streams similar, but new, tracks. www.pandora.com

  • Netflix. Stream high-quality movies and TV shows to your Touch. All you need is an unlimited plan from Netflix ($8 and up) and the Netflix app, available free in the App Store. www.netflix.com

  • Hulu Plus. A mere $8 a month in subscription fees and the free Hulu Plus app from the App Store sets you up with thousands of TV episodes from old and new series. www.hulu.com/plus

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Don’t want to pay for streaming video? You can always download Google’s standalone YouTube app for iOS (shown at left) for something truly entertaining—or just plain weird. And Apple hosts a huge collection of current movie trailers at www.apple.com/trailers. Tap a movie poster to get started; there’s also an app version called iTunes Movie Trailers.

Use Safari Security

THE WEB IS FULL of wonders—it’s like the collective consciousness and accumulated knowledge of everyone who’s ever used it, right there for you to explore. The Web is also full of jerks, criminals, and general-purpose evildoers, so you have to take care to keep your personal information safe in this Playground of Information. To see how Safari can help protect you, go to the Touch’s Home screen and tap Settings→Safari. Your defenses include these:

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  • Private Browsing. Tap this setting to On and you can surf incognito because Safari won’t store browser history or other surfing evidence. The Safari window changes from gray to black during a private session.

  • Accept Cookies. A cookie is a file that helps a website recognize you. This can be good—you get a personal greeting from sites you revisit, for example—or bad, because some cookies track and report (to paying third parties) the ads you respond to. Here, you can choose to have Safari take a cookie Never, Always, or only from sites you actually visit.

  • Clear History. Tap this button to erase your Safari history (The Safari History List).

  • Clear Cookies and Data. This info cache is where your Touch stores cookies, downloaded graphics, and other web-page parts to speed your surfing. You can jettison these files by tapping the Clear button here.

  • Fraud Warning. Some websites aren’t what they appear to be; their main purpose is phishing—using a masquerade to get you to enter personal information, like a Social Security number. Make sure this setting is on so Safari can warn you when a site stinks like bad phish.

  • JavaScript. Developers use this tool to run little programs within web pages. Many are innocent, and most people leave JavaScript on. But some are not, and JavaScript can also slow down page loads a bit. Turn it off or on here.

  • Block Pop-ups. Once a web surfer’s lament, these unwanted extra windows (usually filled with ads) have largely been shattered by pop-up blocking controls in most browsers. Still, you may need a pop-up window here and there to order concert tickets or fill in web forms. You can block or unblock pop-ups here, but it’s a universal setting for all sites.

  • Advanced. Tap Website Data to see and delete info that websites store on your ’Pod, or to turn on Web Inspector to track programming errors.

Set Up Mail Accounts

WHEN YOU’RE NEAR A WiFi hot spot, the Touch is a traveling email machine that lets you read, write, and send messages. And just as there are two ways to get apps on the Touch, there are two ways to set up your email accounts.

  • Sync mail settings with iTunes. You get email on your computer, right? If you’re using a dedicated program, like Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, you can copy those account settings over to the Touch. Connect the Touch to your computer, click its icon in iTunes, and then click the Info tab. Scroll down to Sync Mail Accounts and turn on the checkbox next to it. All the email accounts on your computer are listed underneath, so turn on the checkboxes next to the ones you want to tote around on the Touch. Click Sync or Apply to copy the settings—but not your computer-based messages—over to the Touch.

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  • Set up mail accounts on the Touch. Tap the Mail icon. You can set up a free iCloud account (Set Up an iCloud Account) or, if you use Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL, tap the appropriate icon. If you don’t use any of those, tap Other. On the next screen, type in your name, email address, password, and a brief description (“Gmail,” say). If you tapped Other, type in the account settings you got from your Internet provider when you signed up. Click Save, and the program fetches your mail. Need help sorting through email geekery, like the difference between IMAP and POP? Check out this book’s Missing CD page at http://missingmanuals.com/cds/ipodtmm11/.

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Adjust Mail Settings

LIKE MOST PROGRAMS, THE Touch’s mail app comes with standard settings for things like the size of the text that appears on-screen. If you don’t like the way the type looks or you want to tweak the program in other ways (like how many lines of a message appear in the Inbox preview), take a trip to Home→Settings→Mail, Contacts, Calendars. From here, you can:

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  • Add a custom signature. You can add a personalized tag to the bottom of each outgoing message, with a different one for every mail account. Popular signatures include your contact information, Twitter handle, or quotes from Star Wars.

  • Show more (or less) preview in your message list. Out of the box, the iPod’s mail program shows you a two-line preview of each message so you have some idea of what it contains. You can change this to one to five lines, or select None to turn it off entirely.

  • Set a default mail account. If you have multiple email accounts on your Touch, use this setting to designate one of them as your default for all outgoing messages (and for messages you create by tapping mail links in other programs). Remember, you can still tap the From field to switch to a different account on the fly.

  • Load remote images (or not). Some people don’t like embedded graphics in messages, as they can transmit a signal to the sender that you opened the message. Turn off images here.

  • Organize by thread. Hate threaded messages clumped together under one subject line? Turn it (and those icons) off here.

  • Increase quote levels. Mail indents sections of the original message when you reply to it. If you hate that indenting stuff, turn it off here.

  • Delete unwanted mail accounts. Need to ditch an account because it’s become too spam-laden or you want to streamline things? Flick up to the Accounts section, tap the name of the doomed account to get to its settings, and then tap Delete Account.

Use Email on the Touch

MAIL ON THE TOUCH looks and works pretty much like any other email program. You can:

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  • Check mail. Tap the Mail icon on the Home screen. If you have just a single account on your Touch, you see just one Inbox. If you’re juggling multiple mail accounts, the Inboxes area of the Mailboxes screen displays the name of each account, the number of new messages in each, and the total number of new messages. You can get to the individual mailbox folders for each account (like Sent and Saved) by tapping their names in the Accounts list. Tap the button in the bottom-left corner to check for new messages.

  • Read mail. When you have an Inbox open on the screen, tap a message preview (pictured bottom right) to open it. A blue dot means you haven’t read that message yet. If you open the message and want to remember to read it again later, tap Details on the From line, and then tap the blue Mark Unread link that appears.

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  • Write mail. To compose a new message, tap the icon in the bottom-left corner of the mailbox screen or in an open message. An empty message form and the Touch’s keyboard appear, ready for you to write and send mail. To format text, select it, tap the icon on the menu, tap B/U, and then pick a style.

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  • Delete mail. Tap the icon at the bottom of the screen to trash an open message. Delete a message without opening it by swiping your finger across its Inbox preview and tapping the red Delete button that appears. To trash bulk mail in bulk, tap the Edit button in the upper-right corner of the Inbox screen. Tap the preview of each message so a red checkmark appears, and then tap Delete to whack them all at once.

On the Edit screen, you can also move messages to another mail folder, tap the Mark button to flag messages () for later, or mark them as unread or read, depending on their current state; see Flag Messages for Later.

Add Picture and Video Attachments to Mail Messages

One of the more popular uses of email (besides the sending and unfortunate receiving of spam) is as a delivery mechanism for pictures and videos. Images of grandkids, puppies, and kittens fill the Internet. If the photo or video is in your iPod’s Photos app, you can mail it. (See Chapter 15 for more on shooting, syncing, and storing photos on your Touch. Chapter 14 tells you how to have the same kind of fun with videos.)

In iOS 6 for the iPod Touch, you can stick a photo on an outgoing message—even if you’ve already started the message. With the message open, press your finger on the screen where you want to add the photo or video. A menu appears. Tap “Insert Photo or Video,” as shown below left.

A box with your Camera Roll and other photo albums appears. To select a photo or video you shot with your iPod, tap Camera Roll, and then tap the thumbnail of the image or clip you want to attach. Tap Choose in the bottom-right corner (below middle) to insert the item into the message (below right).

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To mail a photo right from the Photos app, select the picture, then tap and choose Mail to create a new message with the photo attached.

To select multiple photos for mailing, open the album and tap the Edit button. Tap the photos you want to send (up to five at a time) to select them. Tap the Share button, and then tap Mail.

If you already have a message started, you can paste in a picture. Double-click the Home button and select Photos in the app panel that appears at the bottom of the screen. Tap open the album that has the photo you want to use. Press the thumbnail until the Copy button appears. Tap Copy, then press the Home button and go back to the Mail app—where you can press down on the open message and tap Paste to stick the image into the message.

Set Up a VIP Mailbox

EMAIL IS A GREAT way to exchange information, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed with trying to find the messages you want among the spam, newsletters, and other stuff in your mailbox. Wouldn’t it be great if the Touch would notify you when someone you want to hear from zaps you a note?

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In iOS 6, this dream comes true. Thanks to the VIP Mailbox feature baked into the latest version of the iPod’s Mail app, you can set up a list of all the important people in your life—spouse, offspring, parents, business partners, Amazon customer service—and have the Touch collect those messages in the VIP mailbox and notify you (Use Notifications) when they arrive.

Here’s how to set up a VIP Mailbox:

  1. Open the Mail app and tap VIP in the Mailboxes list.

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  2. Tap Add VIP.

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  3. When your Contacts list appears, flick around and tap the names of the people to whom you want to assign VIP status.

  4. To have the iPod alert you when one of your VIPs has dropped you a line, tap VIP Alerts. This takes you to the Notifications settings. Next to Notification Center, tap the On button and choose an alert style (discreet screen-top banners or middle-of-the-screen alerts like the one on the bottom right). Choose what kind of sound you want the iPod to play, whether you want to see a message preview, and if you’d like the notification to show up on the iPod’s Lock Screen, too. (Use Notifications has more about configuring Notifications for Touch apps.)

Now, whenever one of your VIPs sends you a message, it arrives in style and with a star (). To add new VIPs to your list, tap in the VIP Inbox, and then tap Add VIP on the next screen. You can remove people by tapping open the VIP list, hitting the Edit button, and then tapping next to The Unworthy.

Flag Messages for Later

THE MAIL APP GIVES you a couple of ways to deal with messages at a later time. You can flag certain messages, which makes them stand out in the Inbox with a snappy orange flag. Or you can mark messages as unread, which restores their blue “unread” dot and makes them seem like new messages all over again. Here’s what to do for:

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  • One message. If you have the message open on-screen, tap the flag icon () at the top of the Mail window. Select Flag or Mark as Unread from the menu.

  • Multiple messages. If you’re cruising down your Inbox and see several pieces of mail you want to flag or mark as unread at once, tap the Edit button at the top of the column. Tap each message you want to either flag or mark as unread, and then tap the Mark button at the bottom of the screen. Choose Flag or Mark as Unread to change the selected messages.

If you already have a message flagged and you hit the Flag/Mark menu, you get the option to unflag the item and remove its Marker of Importance. Likewise, if you have mail you haven’t read—and you don’t want to read—the menu gives you a “Mark as Read” option. Tapping it whacks the “unread” dot () from your message so it sinks back into the pile of mail you’ve already read.

The Flagged Mailbox

Those snappy orange flags do a good job of making those deal-with-me-later messages stand out in your mailbox, but what if you have a ton of messages in your Inbox—do you really want to scroll up and down the list looking for that one flag in the bunch? Or maybe you have multiple mail accounts and can’t remember where you planted the flag about that upcoming meeting.

The iPod gives your flagged messages a whole mailbox of their own. It’s like a To Do List for messages that need responses.

You don’t see the Flagged mailbox until you stick that first flag on a message. But once you do, it pops up proudly in your iPod’s Inbox panel, right under your VIP list. It even displays the number of messages in the box. When you unflag or delete the last message in the list, the Flagged mailbox disappears from view—only to return when you let your mail flag fly once again.

Set Up an iCloud Account

BACK BEFORE ICLOUD FLOATED into view, if your iPod Touch got broken or lost—and you hadn’t backed up its files to your desktop computer—you were out of luck.

But Apple’s free iCloud service backs up all your stuff, including music, apps, personal info, and more, to a great big server in the sky. Providing, that is, that you have iCloud turned on and actually set to back up your data. You also need iOS 5 or later installed on your iPod and on any other iOS devices you want to keep synced up. If you didn’t create an iCloud account when you first set up your iPod (Set Up and Activate Your Touch), here’s what to do:

  1. Go to the Home screen and tap Settings→iCloud.

  2. Create an iCloud account. Tap the Account button and fill in your Apple ID (Set Up an Apple Account) and other requested info. Along with an iCloud account, you get a free email account on Apple’s me.com servers to add to your address collection.

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  3. Now it’s time to tell iCloud what you want it to back up and sync. The first batch of apps in the list are the Touch’s personal information and organizer programs: Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari bookmarks, Notes, and your Passbook documents; except for Safari and Mail, all the apps are explained back in Chapter 4. Tap the button to On for each one you want iCloud to sync for you. You also get online versions of the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars apps that you can tap into, read, and edit using any web browser (see Use iCloud on the Web).

  4. Once you have these files secure, it’s time to get your photo stream flowing. If you want iCloud to automatically transfer photos you take with your Touch to your computer, Apple TV, and other iOS devices (like your iPhone or iPad), tap Photo Stream settings to On. Share and Stream Photos With iCloud has more on using Photo Stream.

  5. Thanks to the iWork apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, you can edit and review documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on your various iOS 5-and-later devices, and iCloud keeps those files in sync across your gadgets—and backed up to the Web as well. To make sure that happens, go to the iCloud settings page, tap Documents & Data, and then tap the On button. Flipping this setting to On also syncs up your Safari Reading List (Use Safari Reader and Reading List) between your iOS 5 gadgets and any computers running Safari.

  6. Another benefit of iCloud is its Find My iPod feature. You can use it to track down a missing Touch, whether it’s just lost in the house somewhere, back at the office, or hijacked by an evildoer. Tap the On button here if you want to Find Your iPod. Later, when you need to locate the errant ’Pod, go to www.icloud.com/find and log into your account. If your iPod is still on a WiFi network somewhere, you see it on a map—with the option to send a sound alert or message to display on its screen, like “Yo, this is my lost iPod” along with your contact info. To protect personal data, you can also lock the screen or erase the iPod’s contents from afar.

  7. Although your iTunes Store purchases and your Photo Stream pictures don’t count against iCloud’s free 5 gigabytes of storage, you may need more room if you have a lot of documents and other data to back up. If you suspect things are getting tight, tap the Storage & Backup button on the iCloud settings screen to see how much space your stuff currently takes up. If you don’t want to delete anything, tap the Buy More Storage button. On the next screen, you can tap to sign up for an additional 10 GB ($20 a year), 20 GB ($40 a year), or 50 GB ($100 a year) of space. All of this is on top of your free 5 GB. The extra gigs get billed to your iTunes Store account.

  8. Finally, if you want to back up your iPod’s system settings, app settings, and Camera Roll photos, pop down to the “Back Up to iCloud” line on the Settings screen and tap it to On. iCloud now copies your Touch’s housekeeping settings and pics daily via your WiFi connection. You can trigger a backup session right away by tapping Back Up Now. (Remember, all your other data—iTunes purchases, personal info, and documents—are taken care of by other parts of the iCloud service.)

iCloud does its deep-in-the-background backup thing when you have your iPod connected to a WiFi network, plugged in to a power source, and locked. (You can perform a similar backup through iTunes on your computer, as Start Over: Restoring Your iPod’s Software describes.) When setting up a new Touch (or one you restored to its factory settings), you get the option to restore all that backed up data.

If you ever need to adjust your backup settings, add more online storage, or even delete your account, just return to Home→iCloud→Settings.

Use iCloud on Your Computer

SOME PEOPLE WILL NEVER sync their Touches to a computer, and for them, the iCloud setup process concluded on the previous page. But what if you want to bring the cloud down to earth, namely, to your desktop or laptop computer? When you loop your computer into iCloud, it can download content from your account, like permanent copies of pics from your Photo Stream.

You can also update the iPod’s address book and calendar by typing new information into relevant programs, like Microsoft Outlook or iCal. Once you make a change on the computer, iCloud pushes it out to your iPod Touch and other iCloud-connected devices—as long as you have everything set up on your computer as well as on your iPod.

If you haven’t signed up for an iCloud account, go to www.icloud.com and click Sign Up. If you have an Apple ID, enter your user name and password to log in.

Windows users must download a setup program for iCloud’s control panel from the site first. Once you install the Apple iCloud software on your computer, go to Start→Control Panel→Network and Internet→iCloud and log in with your user name and password.

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In the window that pops up (shown right), turn on the checkboxes for the stuff you want to sync from your computer, including mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks. Windows users need Microsoft Outlook 2007 or later to sync their mail, contacts, and calendars over iCloud. You can also turn on Photo Stream here; Share and Stream Photos With iCloud has more on that.

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Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion) users just need to visit →System Preferences→iCloud to get to the options for syncing Mail accounts, Mac OS X Address Book contacts, iCal calendars, and Safari bookmarks.

Once you have iCloud configured on both your iPod (described on the previous two pages) and your computer, you’re syncing. Want to know where else you can see your iCloud info in a pinch if your computer or iPod isn’t within reach? The Web, of course. Read on.

Use iCloud on the Web

YOU CAN GET TO your iCloud mail, calendars, contacts, and more through just about any Internet-connected computer. Being able to get to your iCloud data through the Web is great for those times when you don’t have access to it through your home computer or iPod Touch—like when you’re on your office PC, or on the road without electronics.

To see your iCloud mail, for example, just grab a web browser and go to www.icloud.com. Type in your iCloud user name and password to get to your Inbox on the Web. (If you had an old MobileMe or .Mac account, you can see your messages from those, too, providing you converted your old account to an iCloud account at Apple’s persistent prompting.)

As shown below, the main dashboard on the iCloud site also offers clickable icons for your contacts and calendars—both of which you can update here and have those changes show up on your Touch and computer back home. The Notes and Reminder apps sync up here as well. And although iCloud calls its iPod locator (free in the App Store!) Find My iPhone, click the radar-screen icon to log in and locate the whereabouts of a missing Touch.

Do you use Apple’s iWork suite of productivity programs on, say, both your iPad and iPod Touch, and want to keep your documents up to date on both gadgets? Click the iWork icon here to see (and transfer) copies of those files from your online iWork file cabinet, where the latest version is always on file. It’s also probably one of the most tidy file cabinets you’ll see online.

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