Despite iPhone 3.0’s push notifications and previously mentioned Google Sync’s contacts and calendars syncing chops, push Gmail still hasn’t come to the iPhone. But with the Prowl iPhone application, you can now push Gmail notifications—and then some—to your iPhone.

What Prowl Does

The $3 Prowl iPhone application [iTunes App Store Link] works in conjunction with Growl, the universal notification application for Macs, to push desktop notifications to your iPhone. (The current release of Growl for Windows doesn’t yet work with Prowl, but the latest unreleased version supposedly already does—meaning Windows users should be able to do this once Growl for Windows updates.)

How It Works

Whenever an application sends a notification to Growl, Growl sends that notification to Prowl’s servers, which in turn sends a push notification to your iPhone. So, for example, if you’ve got Growl set up to display new Gmail notifications (details below), Prowl can push those same notifications to your iPhone. The cool part about Prowl is that it doesn’t just work with Gmail—it works with anything that Growl does.

NOTE: What you’ll get after following these instructions isn’t true push email, but it’s a pretty solid approximation. In fact, in order for it to work consistently, you’ll need to have an always-on computer to push your Growl notifications to your iPhone. But until something better comes along, it’s a pretty strong alternative.

Set Up Prowl with Growl

If you haven’t already, go download and install Growl (it will install as a new preference pane in the System Preferences of your Mac).

Next, head over to the Prowl web site and register for an account (Prowl doesn’t even require an email address). Once registered, download the Prowl plug-in for Growl, unzip it, and double-click the Prowl.growlView file to install the Prowl plug-in to Growl.

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to set up Prowl on your computer. Fire up the Growl preference pane (System Preference -> Growl), then click on the Display Options tab. Select Prowl in the Display Styles list on the left, then enter the Prowl username and password you registered with and click Verify to make sure Growl can properly talk to Prowl’s servers. (If everything’s copacetic, you’ll see a green checkmark next to the Password field.) If you want to use Prowl as the default for Growl (meaning you want the majority of your Growl notifications pushed to your iPhone), you can also set Prowl as the default from the Default Style drop-down.

When you set Prowl as your display notification type, you still get to choose what your Growl notifications will look like—you just do so through this Prowl display options menu. Make sure you’ve ticked the checkbox labeled Display notifications using style, then select the style you prefer (I’m a smoke person). You can also adjust what kind of Growl notifications Prowl will forward and when—for example, I’ve set Growl to only send notifications to Prowl when the priority is at least High, and I only send notifications when my computer has been idle for more than 5 minutes (presumably you don’t need push notifications if you’re already sitting at your computer).

If you’ve already downloaded Prowl to your iPhone (and choked on the $3 price tag—yeah, we’re cheap) and logged into your Prowl account from your device, any new Growl notifications with Prowl set as the display type will push those notifications to your iPhone. Pretty cool, huh? That can potentially include anything from your IM client to your iTunes notifier and, yes, Gmail. Of course, Gmail requires a little more set up.

Set Up Gmail Notifier with Growl and Prowl

In order to get Gmail playing nice with Growl, you’ve got a few more steps to go. First, you need to download and install the Google Notifier for Mac—the official Gmail and Google Calendar notifier from Google. Next, download the Google+Growl plug-in for Google Notifier, unzip it, and install the Google+Growl Utility to your Applications folder. When you run it, this little utility keeps its eye on the Google Notifier and pushes any new email updates (and event alerts, if you wish) to Growl… which, if set up with Prowl, pushes the alert to your iPhone.

To make sure Google+Growl is set to work with Prowl, open up Growl one more time, click the Applications tab, and double-click on Google+Growl. Make sure Prowl is set as the default display style, then click the Notifications tab. On this tab, you’ll see a notifications drop-down with New Event and New Gmail selections. Make sure that both are set with Prowl as the display style. (If, like me, you’re setting Prowl only to push high priority Growl notifications, make sure you set the priority to High as well.

Keep in mind that you need to keep Google+Growl running in the background for the whole system to work, too. It all sounds fairly convoluted for something that should be so simple, but once you’ve got it set up, you shouldn’t have to do any fiddling after that

A year or so ago I was using a third-party background app (required jailbreak) called iMapIDLE that simulated push for Gmail, and while it looks like something similar is undergoing review for the App Store, the Prowl approach seems like another very solid one. It doesn’t require you to hand over any usernames or passwords to a third party, since the notifications are all coming from your computer, and it can work with all sorts of notifications that Growl already supports (imagine getting a notification that your BitTorrent client just finished downloading that movie while you’re picking up dinner, for example).

As I said above, Windows support for using Prowl in conjunction with Growl for Windows isn’t quite there, but it should be very soon, making this a pretty solid solution for rolling notifications for just about anything from your desktop—and that, we like very much.

Got something clever you’d like to use Prowl for aside from Gmail push notifications? Have another, better method you’re already using? Let’s hear it in the comments.

(Via Lifehacker.)

Windows only: Hulu Video Downloader is a free application that saves Hulu videos to your desktop and converts them to virtually any popular, device-friendly format you might want—at least in theory.

Just copy and paste the URL to any Hulu video you want to download into the Hulu Video Downloader application and click Add. The application itself is kind of horrendous in the looks department, but you shouldn’t judge a software by its chrome. Unfortunately I had some trouble getting the actual application to work in my tests (kept sticking at the Please Wait notification); I decided to go ahead and post it with a your-mileage-may-vary disclaimer, since it would be a great app to have on hand if it did work, and you may have more luck than I did.

Hulu Video Downloader is freeware, Windows only. If you want to download Hulu videos in ‘high quality,’ you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version. Name aside, the pro version of the downloader is also supposed to work with most popular online video sites, including YouTube and Vimeo. For our money, the free version will suffice, especially since there are already plenty of similar apps that support YouTube. If you had more luck than I did with this app (it seemed to work for Nirmal over at Life Rocks 2.0), share your experience in the comments.

Hulu Video Downloader [via Life Rocks 2.0]

(Via Lifehacker.)

Here’s one of the most creative music videos that you’ve seen in a long, long time.

Incredible creativity, lots of planning and a handful of webcams from fans come together to achieve glorious video magic.

(via make the logo bigger.)

The new Factron case for the iPhone looks to beef up the iPhone’s camera capacity considerably with interchangeable lenses that screw onto the already sweet-looking metal and leather case.

It’s compatible with the iPhone 3G only, for some reason, but 3G owners should be pretty excited—the case features wide-angle, closeup, and fisheye lenses that screw on to the back, in case you want all your contacts to look like they’re in a late ’90s rap and/or skateboard video. But it doesn’t come cheap, at $200 for the case and $15-55 for each additional lens, and the company even warns that reception may not be so hot, considering all that metal between the receiver and signal.

[Factron via Engadget]

(Via Gizmodo.)

Happy 4th of July from HacknMod! Here’s a quick, simple project for your 4th of July celebration: a computer playing the anthem along with a flying American flag illuminated and powered via USB. The setup is simple and easy to put together. The project put together by Evan Roth’s project is definately salute worthy.

The USB LED lamp and the USB fan are paired together. The lamp and fan arms are supported by a straightened wire coat hanger. The wire coat hanger also serves as the mast. The entire gadget is bound with duct tape and heat shrink wrap, twisted into shape and plugged into the USB ports of a computer. Quick list of materials:

• USB Fan
• USB LED lamp
• 12″ of heat shrink wrap
• Flag (country of choice), roughly 9″ x 6″
• Roll of electrical tape
• An unlimited supply of patriotism.

The final effect is supplied by the PC (call it the ‘patriotic computer’). Change the boot-up music to your national anthem and the desktop wallpaper to a patriotic image. When the computer boots up, the USB fan wafts the flag, the USB LED lamp lights it up and as a backdrop you have the anthem with patriotic imagery thrown in.

USB has its uses like the how to on a cheap USB powered fan we had covered earlier. That’s one from our entire section on USB project hacks.

(Via HacknMod.com - You name it. We hack it..)

The concept of Soundboard is similar to the “cart machines” that once populated radio stations — devices that played back endless-loop tape cartridges used to play commercials, sound effects and other audio content. You can create libraries of audio clips using Soundboard, then trigger the effects by tapping hot keys on your Mac’s keyboard. You can drag in any audio file your Mac can play.

Soundboard includes editing tools, and lets you apply effects or filters. Imported sounds are converted to Apple Lossless format to retain high fidelity and ensure instant playback. Soundboard can also be controlled using MIDI devices, with effects like panning and gain possible as well.

System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.5 or later, G4/1.25GHz or faster (including Intel) and 1GB RAM.

A 25 percent discount is also available for owners of WireTap Studio and WireTap Anywhere, two audio utilities also produced by Ambrosia.

More details here Soundboard

For anyone who lives outside the US (or is a US citizen but goes outside the country for vacation), one of the more frustrating aspects of most of the TV streaming services I wrote about earlier is that they are restricted to users accessing the site from the United States. On the flip-side, the BBC’s iPlayer is restricted to UK users only, because the BBC is funded by the British public.

OK, fine, I understand the BBC position. If I paid taxes to sponsor the programming, I might be miffed if the rest of the world had free access too. But what if you are a UK resident who happens to go on holiday to another part of Europe? Should you really have to miss “EastEnders?” I say, “no.”

So, how do you access sites restricted by location? The same way savvy Chinese users can break pas the Great Firewall of China: proxy servers.

Update: The comments, and some subsequent research on my part, confirm that Hulu and some of the other US-based providers are now doing geo-checks at the RTSP stream level, so a HTTP proxy bypass won’t work. CBS.com will still work with a proxy workaround, and obviously, BBC’s iPlayer.

Right now, using a VPN, which is usually going to cost some money (around $15 - $20 should get you enough bandwidth for several months, depending on what service you use), is the best workaround. I’ll keep investigating.

Hotspot Shield, which we wrote about back in January, may still work for non-US residents.

/Update

Now, I want to be clear, although there are many types of proxy servers with varying degrees of anonymity, that is beyond the scope of this post. This is strictly for accessing video (or audio) content that blocks or allows access based on region.

By connecting your browser through a proxy server from another country, you can access information that might otherwise be blocked. Although almost all modern web browsers will allow you to alter your proxy settings at will, Firefox is generally the easiest browser to configure.

You want to start by installing FoxyProxy or another proxy manager. FoxyProxy replaces the default Firefox proxy setting in Preferences and is extremely easy to configure and turn off and on. You can even set up certain rules for using a proxy only when you access certain sites, making the experience even more autonomous.

After installing FoxyProxy (just allow the default setup unless you want to configure advanced settings for yourself), the next step is to find an available, and free proxy server that resides in the same place as the content you are trying to access.

You can Google “proxy server [country name]” or go to sites like this, which provide frequently updated proxy lists. Just sort by country.

Then, try a few HTTP proxies out. Enter in the IP or URL and the port into FoxyProxy. Then select the option to use that proxy for all URLS (you can just click on a list in the bottom of your Firefox status bar). That’s it!

Note:

It might take some effort to find a proxy that is in the country you are wanting to impersonate and that is not slow as molasses, but keep plugging away, I find off-peak times work best, and you are good to go.

A few additional caveats:

• Don’t access any banking sites or enter in information that is personally sensitive while using a proxy connection, unless you know the source and feel comfortable with its security.
• Some sites like Google and Wikipedia block proxy servers or limit their ability to access or contribute information.
• Many of the free proxy servers are only open for brief periods of time. Just because one connection works one day does no mean it will work the next. Or even in an hour.