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MobileMe has been updated to offer at least some functionality when accessing the me.com page from Mobile Safari. It doesn’t yet offer full access to MobileMe’s features via the browser, but it does allow access to the “Find My iPhone” feature from an iPhone or iPod touch.

Originally, loading me.com from Mobile Safari brought up a page telling you to set up MobileMe on your computer, offering a link to instructions. Now, an iPhone-specific page loads offering links to the iDisk and Gallery apps, setup instructions for e-mail, contacts, and calendars, and a new option to access Find My iPhone.

As TidBITS noted, using Find My iPhone hasn’t been updated to offer an iPhone-optimized interface, but it can save a trip home when you know you’ve misplaced your iPhone and suspect it’s nearby (assuming you have a friend with an iPhone, that is). That’s better than nothing, in our opinion.

You still can’t access any of your account settings or any other features directly using MobileMe though. Apple is clearly pushing the integration of the features with the iPhone OS and its accessory iDisk and Gallery apps. There are times when it might be useful to have access to those features via a browser, such as when your own iPhone is missing or left at home and you’re using a friend’s. Until Apple offers that functionality though, the current update is at least a minor improvement.

Filed under: How-tos

Last week, the fine Facebook folk let us know (via the Facebook Help Center) that you can now sign in to Facebook’s chat service using iChat. Of course, the free Adium client has directly supported Facebook chat since version 1.3 (released in 2008), but this step opens up a much wider range of clients for the service.

Facebook’s chat service is powered by the Jabber/XMPP open source chat protocol. Many networks (such as Google Chat) rely on Jabber, and for this reason chat clients like iChat and Adium allow for the setup of a generic Jabber account to facilitate the widespread use of Jabber.

The process is simple. First, create a new generic Jabber account pointed at Facebook’s Jabber server. The username to use is your Facebook username (which you can find on the Account Settings page) and the password is the same as your Facebook login password. Next, point the server to “chat.facebook.com,” configure the port to 5222 and un-check the box for “Use SSL.”

After it’s all said and done, you should be able to communicate with your Facebook friends using iChat without being logged in to Facebook with a browser.

[via Cult of Mac & 9to5Mac]

TUAWHow to: Facebook chat in iChat or Adium originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If your friends post YouTube videos to Facebook, you’ll now see those clips in your timeline on the YouTube homepage. It’s another social mashup that’s blurring the lines between the various social sites.

The new feature isn’t yet live on all accounts, but you can enable it by visiting your account settings page and enabling “Connect to Facebook” (if this is already enabled, you may need to disconnect and reconnect Facebook to see the new feature). Also note that by enabling this you’ll syndicate your YouTube ratings, favorites and uploads to Facebook – if you don’t want that to happen, select “Disable AutoShare”.

YouTube’s social strategy is shaping up: in recent months they’ve added cross-posting of your videos to Facebook and Twitter, a friend import feature for your email accounts, and of course the “activity module” (pictured) that creates a real-time feed of all your friends’ activities on the site.

Tags: facebook, youtube

Grabbing Dropbox files from a web browser got a bit easier overnight, as the file synchronizing service added search, bulk operations for separate items, Gmail-style keyboard shortcuts, and a mobile interface for non-iPhone browsers to its web site.

The site as a whole got a visual overhaul, actually, but what established Dropbox users are going to most appreciate is the ability to create new ZIP-ed packages of different files—a few files, one or two folders, and maybe that picture, all at once—and grab them. The Dropbox team also added a search bar and “Gmail-style keyboard shortcuts,” although we haven’t seen a guide to those shortcuts as of yet.

Update: Reader Samuel points out that keyboard shortcuts are something you have to enable from the “Other Preferences” section of your Account settings on Dropbox’s web site. Once you do, hitting “?” brings up the shortcut list you see here. Very Gmail-like indeed.

The non-iPhone mobile version, assuming I’m seeing it on my Android model, works fairly well, providing quick access to files and recent changes. We’re still waiting on a dedicated iPhone app—submitted for Apple’s approval about four weeks ago—but these changes, mobile and otherwise, are a nice step forward for grabbing files when you’re at a non-synced computer or on your mobile device.