Uploading Mobile Photos from the iPhone to Facebook

The iPhone doesn't support MMS messaging. I suppose the though is, why should it if you have full access to e-mail? So, there were issues in not being able to upload mobile images to Facebook, which is done via MMS.

Along came pxPipe from alwaysBETA to fix the problem. Which, I'm told, worked great. Until Facebook added e-mail support, allowing iPhone users to simply e-mail the photos to photos[at]facebook[dot]com and pxPipe, no longer needed, shut down.

That was great and I used the Facebook e-mail address method all the time. Now, when I try to e-mail photos to Facebook I get the message:

Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email. You sent from GMail. If you are sending from a phone, it must be configured to send directly.

Facebook doesn't seem to have any mention of this in their Mobile Help section. There's really no info about this on the Interwebs. So, what's up? Facebook needs to fix this; pxPipe needs to open back up; something must be done! Oh! The angst!

Using Gmail on the iPhone

Using Gmail on the iPhone is a huge headache, especially if you receive a lot of email in your Gmail account. I was looking for a better way and found some great instructions on CatCubed for using Gmail through an IMAP server. Full instructions can be found on the CatCubed site, but here's a brief recap for my readers.

You'll need to start with three things:

1. An iPhone (...)
2. A Gmail account
3. An ISP or host that supports IMAP (I used 1and1, which hosts this page)

Steps:

1. Create an e-mail account on your ISP or host. You can give this account any name you want - it's not a publicly facing address. For example, mail@domain.com.
   
2. Set up a filter in Gmail to forward all mail to your mail@domain.com address, and auto-archive (skip the inbox)
3. Set up your iPhone to receive e-mail from the mail@domain.com IMAP server and send mail through smtp.gmail.com - your Gmail account will continue to be your outward facing e-mail address
4. Set up Mail (OS X) or the e-mail application of your choosing to do the same. This can be done in multiple locations. For example, I have Mail set up at home and Outlook set up at work.

What happens:

Gmail will continue to filter spam and store all messages, so there's a central archive, but when you delete an email in Outlook, Mail or on the iPhone, it's reflected in all places. IMAP servers store the status of the message on the server, POP stores it in the application that particular e-mail was downloaded to. This way, you don't need to archive messages in Gmail, on your iPhone and in any other application you may use to gather mail - everything is synced!

Again, more details can be found on the CatCubed site here.