Ask TUAW: Lotus Notes to iPhone, Time Capsule storage, uninstalling Haxies, and more

Khalid asks

Any way to sync iPhone contacts, calender and mail with IBM Lotus Notes?

If you don't mind dropping a C-note there's iClink from CampanionLink Software. It's a free iPhone app that syncs with their CompanionLink Professional (which is what actually costs $99.95). You apparently also would face a monthly wireless sync service fee.

Assuming that you'd like a more economical approach, check out this post for some ideas. Basically he suggests forwarding your email to Gmail then syncing Notes to Google Calendar (thence to your iPhone). He doesn't mention it, but the same basic idea should work with contacts as well.

rnshn said

Help! I've officially run out of space on my 1TB Time Capsule. I am backing up my 20 inch iMac's 250GB drive along with a 1TB WD external harddrive to the 1TB TC. While I realize the 1.25TB total would eventually make me run out of space, I thought a solution would arise before it happened. I've now filled the 1TB WD drive and my iMac's drive is half full, and the 1TB Time Capsule is no longer capable of running backups. How can I add an additional backup volume or expand the space on my Time Capsule? My music and movie collection will only be getting bigger. Surely Apple must have anticipated this. Is there an easy way or an easy workaround?

I don't think there's a way to expand the internal capacity of the Time Capsule (other than actually swapping hard drives). However, you can connect an external USB hard drive to the Time Capsule and use that as your backup location. Unfortunately, you cannot use Time Machine with both the Time Capsule's internal storage and the external hard drive at the same time on the same Mac. That is to say, Time Machine can only backup your Mac to a single drive at a time. So what you could do is hook up a larger external (e.g. 2GB) hard drive to the Time Capsule and make that the backup disk. In that situation, though, the internal Time Capsule disc would go unused by Time Machine. Nonetheless, you could still use it as Network Attached Storage.

Will asks

When someone emails me a meeting invite (ICS file), and I double click it, it appears in iCal and there's is a dialog, with "Maybe, Decline and Accept" as options. Whichever one of these I choose, an email is sent back to the person who sent me the ICS file. I would like to know how to prevent that email being sent, preferably on a case-by-case basic, but if not then globally.

Check out iCal Reply Checker (donations requested) from John Maisey. It should basically do what you want with regards to the reply emails.

Neeraj asks

I have a question that hopefully can be answered next week: I have made a playlist in iTunes and set custom start and stop times for the tracks within it, and I would like to join these tracks to create a single mp3 file, without first burning to a disc and importing into iTunes using the "Join tracks" feature. Is there any way to do this, preferably for free?

I'm not entirely certain how the custom start and stop times affect this, but you should have a look at JoinTogether from Doug's AppleScripts. There's a free basic version as well as a more powerful $7 pro version with more features.

Zoe asks

I have just had an alert pop up on screen to say that Uninsanity Application Enhancer 2.5.1 has an update. But I don't HAVE Application Enhancer installed - at least I've never done it (sole user) and it's not in my System Preferences. However, after a little bit of digging apparently this framework can be installed via other app's without you knowing or agreeing. I can't find out which apps this APE or Haxies get installed with -- do you know of a list? Most importantly -- how can I remove all Haxies and the APE framework from my Mac!?

If you check out Unsanity's FAQ they note that the APE installer also includes an uninstall option. So the easiest way to get rid of it would actually be to download the APE installer, run it, and then select uninstall.

MacBookServer? asks

A question for the future. I have an old Macbook (running Leopard) I want to set up as a basic file server to do two things:

(1) Stream iTunes to home stereo. Goal: Use the iPhone's Remote App to control the music, without ever having to touch the Macbook itself. (FYI the stereo is already set up with Airport Express/Airtunes.)

(2)Set up the Macbook as a file server that can be accessed securely from on the road when I am traveling.

What's the smartest/simplest way to to this, especially the second part?

Well as you note, the first of these is relatively straightforward. The only additional thing to consider is if you might like to stream something beyond iTunes. In that case, you should have a look at Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil ($25) which could conceivably be paired with a more extensive remote application than Apple's if that should strike your fancy.

With regards to the second question, what counts as simplest is perhaps the problem. If you're on a conventional home broadband connection one of the biggest problems will be knowing the IP address of your MacBook (as it may change unpredictably). There are ways around this (like DynDNS). However, MobileMe's Back to My Mac is almost certainly the most seamless solution. There were some reliability issues when it was first introduced, but in my experience it has seemed more stable of late. Of course if you don't want to deal with MobileMe's cost you could also try a web-based remote access solution like LogMeIn Free or GoToMyPC. You might also like to have a look at FarFinder ($35) from Flying Mac, which basically turns your Mac into a web server that gets you access to your files from any browser.