A clever Mac user helped police recover a stolen laptop using Back to My Mac's screen-sharing feature.

After her apartment was burglarized, the victim received a call from a friend while she was at work (conveniently enough, at the Apple Store in Westchester, NY). The friend noticed her stolen computer was online. The victim then quickly used another Mac to connect to the stolen laptop.

The article doesn't mention the technical details, but I reckon she activated screen sharing, and started Photo Booth (or another app that activates the laptop's built-in iSight camera). After a while, the perps showed up, and the victim's roommate recognized one of them as an acquaintance who had attended a party at their apartment some weeks before.

Armed with names and photos of the alleged thieves, police quickly arrested two men, who were in possession of most of the property stolen in the burglary.

If that isn't worth her year's subscription to .Mac, I don't know what is.

(Update: The New York Times has a story with some more details. She used Photo Booth, too. Who called it, baby?)

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

A little birdy told us about some unusual happenings at Apple. According to our anonymous tipster, .Mac will undergo a complete revamp that will coincide with the iPhone 2.0 launch (which everyone expects to occur at WWDC 08). We posted about the .Mac push e-mail coming to iPhone 2.0 last night, but according to our tip, that's not all .Mac users are going to get.

According to our little birdy, .Mac could undergo the following changes as soon as next month:

• Full over-the-air syncing including calendars, contacts, and email (similar to Exchange)
• .Mac syncing on Windows
  

This makes sense, since why would Apple make using an iPhone with Exchange a better experience than when it is paired with .Mac? If these rumors turn out to be true, then the $99 price tag on .Mac could seem a whole lot more worthwhile in the coming months.

Sometimes, we at TUAW get awesome tips from our readers -- this is proof. A certain, unnamed individual sent us some pictures of the latest build of the iPhone firmware showing .Mac push e-mail. The picture shows the main Settings page with a new button: "Fetch new data." When you click the button, you are taken to a list of your mail accounts, where you can choose between either "fetch" or "push."

According to Mr. Anonymous, while .Mac is offering push e-mail, you are currently not able to do contact or calendar syncing. You can see the iPhone screenshots in the gallery.

One of the biggest questions that I had following the iPhone SDK event was how we non-Enterprise users were going to get the cool new wireless syncing features promised to ActiveSync Exchange users. My first guess was that Apple was planning to fold something like that into .Mac, and now iPhone Alley has unearthed something to suggest this might be right.

In the just released SDK beta 2, iPhone Alley found a string within a preference bundle that reads: "Syncing with this Dot Mac account will turn off syncing for other Dot Mac accounts and delete any existing synced data." This suggests the possibility of wireless syncing for non-Exchange users. Frankly, this would make a lot of sense. It would add considerably to the (presently somewhat questionable) value of .Mac and give us consumer types access to some of iPhone 2.0's neatest features.

The cloud storage and sync offering from Sharpcast, SugarSync, has released a public beta of its OS X client today, complementing the existing Windows, web and mobile (WinMo + Blackberry, iPhone coming soon) clients. The Mac client and the Windows client appear pretty much the same, but once you set up your sync you don't have to look at the client UI very often.

SugarSync is a for-pay service that extends your local files seamlessly to your other computers, to a secure webpage, and pretty much to anywhere you think they ought to go. CEO Gibu Thomas describes SugarSync as "get my stuff everywhere," a supercharged and cross-platform version of .Mac iDisk synchronization. Our colleagues at Download Squad have checked out the service in detail, and there's a good writeup at webware.com as well.

To use SugarSync, you can define a set of folders to sync, photos to share, "Magic Briefcase" files that live in the cloud and sync down on demand, click and go -- then the defined content will be available on all your computers. With both "full sync" and "light sync" modes, you can leave rarely used files on the SugarSync side and only retrieve them as needed (great for those MacBook Air users hungry for storage). You can also selectively share photo galleries or other content via the web UI.

Once you get past the 45-day, 10 GB of storage trial period, you can use the discount available through 4/15 to get a half- off data plan (starts at $25/yr for 10 GB, up to 250 GB for $250/yr).The advantages of SugarSync for backup, specificity of synced items, and a supported client may make you give it a look as an alternative to iDisk, or to cloud solutions like OmniDrive, JungleDisk or other clients for Amazon's S3 that require you to roll your own synchronization plan.

Back to my Mac is one of the much-touted features that .Mac subscribers gained with Leopard. Basically, it lets you enjoy screen sharing between two appropriately configured Macs. The main drawback for many is the required .Mac subscription.

If that's you, check out ShareTool. This $20US utility lets users access all of the Bonjour services on their home network, like iTunes music sharing, screen sharing and file sharing from anywhere.

It requires routers that support NAT-PMP or UPnP and Mac OS 10.3.9 (that's right, Leopard is not required). The folks at Bains Software claim that everything is properly encrypted, but we haven't tested this. You can try it out for 15 minutes for free.

I'm probably one of the few bloggers here who hasn't shelled out for a .Mac subscription (and an iDisk) -- I've just never personally come across a situation where I needed one. For transferring big files I usually either throw it on a DVD or an FTP site, or I use YouSendIt for free -- there's a 100mb limit, but in all of my file transferring, I've never had reason to break it (most of what I send is audio tracks for podcasts).

And now they've released the application version of their interface -- YouSendIt Express is now available for the Mac. Unfortunately, it seems like the standalone app doesn't have some options that the web interface does (specifically checking delivery confirmation and a download limit), but for just shuffling a file off to someone else fast, it does the trick.

From everything I can find on the website, it works just great with the free account version of YouSendIt, so if you find yourself shipping off files quickly enough that you need a dedicated app to do it, there you are.

[Via Macenstein]

I have an admission to make: I change browsers on a fairly regular basis (normally, I'm found swapping between Camino and Safari in short succession as I struggle to find a nirvana between the two of them). But what to do with my favourites? Some people I know like to keep browser favourites separate, but I can't stand that. If anything, I've yearned to be able to simply use the same bookmarks (and keyboard shortcuts for Bookmark-bar items) on all the browsers I possibly can.

That's where Bookit comes in handy. There's three options: Manage, Migrate or Restore. You can manually edit bookmarks, and compare them to a 'master' set (in my case, Camino); Migrate will allow you to take a browser's bookmarks, and completely over-write existing bookmarks on any other browser (or overwrite a synchronised copy of your Bookit bookmarks on .Mac), while Restore will allow you to retrieve a previous configuration. With only Safari able to synchronise bookmarks via .Mac, the ability to do so with Camino and Firefox is a welcome relief for those of use who don't (always) use the default OS X browser.

I've used Bookit on three of my Macs around the home and office, with the application working perfectly in bringing my bookmarks across to all of them. Given that the application costs just $12, if you're working with multiple browsers, favourites and machines, I'd highly recommend Bookit.

BusyMac had a good thing going with BusySync 1 and 1.5: seamlessly share and edit calendar info across your home or business LAN using iCal. Version 2 (due next month) features sync via the cloud-- so you can sync a work and home computer, even if you don't work at home. There's also Google Calendar support in BusySync 2, which could be the holy grail many of us have been looking for. Mike does a quick run through in the video.

In what appears to be a clear case of "Mental Health Day Syndrome," the .Mac website has been down for much of the afternoon. Email and Homepage/iWeb services appear to be up, though, and I'm able to connect to my iDisk, so the plumbing is still operational.

Our tipsters note that the site was down for quite a while before the 'maintenance' page went up, so it's possible that this is not a planned outage. If we hear anything else we'll pass it along.

Update: Although I personally can get to the services noted above, comments point out that the .Mac service page is showing red lights across the board except for some users able to get mail.

Update 2: As of 5:05pm ET it looks like everything is green again, with the exception of .Mac Sync still showing issues for some users.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Pomoto is basically a replacement for iPhoto's .Mac web albums, designed to take your iPhoto collection and put it on the web with as little trouble as possible. Like FlickrExport (although this is a separate app, of course, not a plugin), it looks like a pretty smooth way to get all the cool stuff in iPhoto out where everyone else can see it.

The latest version, 1.0.1, includes support for iPhoto 7 Smart Albums and Events, better "privatization" of private Albums, and "more robust photo loading," which I'll leave up to you to decide. Since Pomoto publishes your photos for you, it's really an app tagged into a subscription service, so it costs either $3 a month or $30 a year. If you really like the .Mac photo publishing features, but don't need all of .Mac, it's definitely worth checking out.

As you may recall the notMac Challenge was a contest to produce a free method to duplicate most of the functionality of Apple's .mac, with the winner receiving upwards of $8k from various contributors. A few days ago we mentioned that Ben Spinks had posted a possible solution and that it had been released for testing. Yesterday the Challenge sponsor declared that the Ben had in fact won the challenge and would be receiving the prize. As per the rules of the contest Ben's solution, based on his commercial cross-platform CrushFTP product, will be released as open source freeware. A SourceForge repository has already been set up, and the notMac binary is available for download (dmg link).

Some loose ends still remain to be tidied up (particularly in documentation and installation), but Ben's solution "appears to be functioning perfectly for most users." So if you have a spare Mac to run as a server, this looks like it could be a great way to get most of the .mac functionality without forking over the cash to Apple.

Thanks ed!

Late last year we mentioned the notMac Challenge. Basically they were offering a largish sum of money (now upwards of 8 grand) for anyone who could duplicate the functionality of .mac for free. Now finally Ben Spink of CrushFTP has stepped to the plate with a possible solution, and they're calling for testers. The initial reports (including from one of our tipsters) seem promising, but more real-world testing is needed to assure that Ben has met the challenge conditions (with slight modification). So if you need .mac functionality, but balk at the price, this may very well be worth checking out.

The file for testing is available (dmg link) from Ben's server. Be sure to check out the discussion thread first, however.

Just for the record, Mark/Space offers a similar commercial product SyncTogether, but it sells for $49.95.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Last week, .Mac users were having trouble using Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger service (why they don't connect to MSN Messenger with Adium is unclear, but, whatever...). Specifically, attempts to connect with an "@mac.com" email address produced an error, prompting the the user to change their address.

Microsoft has since fixed the problem, which they attributed to "...internal error during routine testing." In other words, you're now good to go, .Mac users. All is well that ends well.

The new .Mac Web Galleries sure are pretty slick, but their dependency on iPhoto '08 can have some unfortunate side effects. When I first installed iLife '08, I moved my original iPhoto library so I could tinker around with the new version using a few pics I had lying around on my Mac. I then created a Web Gallery with these images just to see how things looked. After deeming it safe to proceed, I replaced my original library to actually begin using the new iPhoto features - the only problem is that, somehow, the .Mac Web Galleries you create seem to be library-specific. In other words: when I created a gallery with my test library and then swapped it out for my true library, the .Mac Web Gallery listing in iPhoto's sidebar was no longer there. I couldn't find any kind of web admin panel at the .Mac site for managing these galleries either, so I quickly found myself in a predicament.

Fortunately, I'm not alone here, and I found this thread in the Apple Discussions forums that describes a method for deleting a gallery manually if it no longer appears in iPhoto's sidebar. The solution basically involves logging into your iDisk from the web (http://idisk.mac.com/UserName) and browsing to the directory that houses your galleries, then manually deleting it from there. For some odd reason, this folder doesn't appear in your iDisk on your Desktop like your other .Mac website files, even with hidden files turned on (I used the Show-Hide widget to quickly toggle hidden files. As far as I can tell, Apple simply doesn't sync this folder down to your Mac or give you access to it with the iDisk). The only problem I had with the solution as it is described in that forum thread is that I didn't find the _gallery folder where the forum poster said I should; instead, it's in iDisk > Web > Sites. Each gallery you have created is stored in its own directory under that folder, so you should be able to delete just the ones you want without affecting the others.

[Update 2: Matt Ronge, developer of upcoming Mac OS X email client Kiwi, enlightened me in the comments with an even easier solution to this problem: simply go to iPhoto's Web Gallery pane in preferences, and simply click Check Now to cause iPhoto to check your .Mac account for any new photos. This should also cause it to catch any galleries not already listed in iPhoto's sidebar, ultimately allowing you to manage and delete them from the comforts of iPhoto.]

[Update: Some commenters are reporting that the _gallery folder in question does actually appear in their iDisk when viewed in the Finder. I don't know why only some of us see it, but you could be one of the lucky few.]

Considering that your Sites (for the old homepage.mac.com pages) and Web folders are synchronized and fully available in your iDisk, I hope that this strange gallery behavior is simply the result of an oversight. While I understand Apple's desire to use software to manage this stuff instead of forcing users to dig around in folders, having manual access to this directory will be useful in a pinch, especially for users who, for example, buy a new Mac or need to have a sick Mac restored.