One key element in Apple‘s advertising campaign for the iPhone4 is showing family and loved ones connecting over a distance visually using FaceTime videoconferencing. It tugs at our heart strings. For me and my wife it produced the result they were hoping for: we both have an iPhone 4 force and when I travel I can call home and see my little girl (and my wife).

FaceTime is video conferencing software developed by Apple for iPhone 4, the fourth generation iPod Touch, and computers running Mac OS X. While researching for my upcoming book I came across a way to place a FaceTime call from a web page.

The link follows this pattern:

facetime://<address>|<MSISDN>|<mobile number>

for example:
facetime://+19995551234

Anatoli Levine wrote a great article on the technology behind Facetime.

Spam weighs heavy on my soul. So I thought of a great way to use Gmail to filter it all out. It’s extra money unit was able to find anybody that Arctic I’ve described this so I thought I’d do it myself. I set this in two simple steps:

1. Set-up Gmail to pull mail from your account
2. Set-up Outlook to pull e-mail from Gmail

In order to accomplish the first step you have to sign up for a Gmail account. If you don’t already have one you can go to this address to get one: http://mail.google.com/mail/signup.

Now that you get your account we’ll set Gmail to pull in e-mail from your other account(s). Detailed instructions can be found here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=21288.

Here are the quick instructions for setting up mail fetcher:

1. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Accounts and Import tab. (For Google Apps domains, open the Accounts tab.)

2. In the Check mail using POP3 section, click Add POP3 email account.

3. Enter the full email address of the account you’d like to access, then click Next Step.

4. Gmail will populate sample settings, but we recommend checking with your other provider to learn the correct server name and port. Enter your Password.

5. Decide whether to:

Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server

If you’d like to keep a copy of each message Gmail retrieves in your other mail accounts, select the Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server checkbox. This way, you can access mail in your other accounts, and in Gmail.

Please note that some email services may still delete your messages when Gmail fetches them. If this option is checked, Gmail will instruct the other domain to leave the messages in place, though the final behavior is up to the other domain.

If you’d rather delete copies of messages that Gmail retrieves, leave this option unchecked. Gmail will delete the messages from the other account as those messages are retrieved, meaning you’ll only be able to read them in Gmail.

Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail

If the email account being retrieved from supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, you can select this option to have all information sent through a secured connection.

If you select this option, and your email provider doesn’t support it, Gmail will let you know that your configuration failed. Clicking Show error details will likely reveal a Protocol error in this case. You’ll need to uncheck this selection before continuing.

Label incoming messages

If you’d like to automatically label all messages that are retrieved from your non-Google account, select this option. You can choose to use the predefined label (your email address), or you can select an existing label or create a new one from the drop-down list.

Archive incoming messages

Mail from this account can be archived directly, without showing up in your inbox. Learn more about archiving.

6. Click Add Account.

7. Once your account has been added successfully, you’ll have the option of setting it as a custom From address. This allows you to compose messages in Gmail, but have them appear to be sent from your other email account. Click Yes to set up a custom From address.

Now that Google is pulling in our mail we need to set up Outlook to pull the mail from Google. Here are the detailed instructions for setting up Outlook 2007 to pull mail from Google: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77689. If you’re using something other than Outlook here is the list of other supported clients: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=75726 .