lobster-sent-with-Iridium-Go-300x225When I venture into the wild, one of the main reasons I want to communicate is to share my experiences with the ones I love. Of course sending e-mails or texting are nice but a picture tells more than a thousand words. I am very satisfied with my Iridium Go as I use it for blogging, Facebook updates and Twitter updates including pictures. This week some insight on the do’s and don’ts for using the Iridium Go.

Sending pictures

First the good news: you can send pictures which can easily be used for Facebook and e-mail purposes. But the Iridium Go is not a broadband device so you have to decrease the pixel size of the picture. Sending a 2 MB picture is just not going to work. But this picture of the lobster for example I sent last week from Kuna Yala with the Iridium Go.

Let´s do it: well first make sure you go to Web&Mail app and go to settings. There you can change max e-mail size to greater than 150 – 200 kb. Second make sure that under settings, pictures are not edited by the app or resized. Also put quality to maximum. Resize your picture yourself in Picasa or other software to say 500 or 600 pixels (as is the lobster picture) and send to your tablet using bluetooth. Then press send and receive e-mail.
Important; it may take 5 minutes to send and the sending might stop midway. No panic! The software is intelligent and when you press send and receive the bar will refresh but in fact sending will continue where it left so it will go twice as fast as before.
Do not, I repeat do not send your e-mail with picture to more than one person because you will have to upload the picture several times straining the network. Simply ask the person to forward the picture!

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Facebook and Iridium GO

The Iridium go supports direct Facebook messaging using Facebook’s e-mail feature. You need to set up your Facebook account for updating via e-mail. This Wiki explains you how to do that. After you are done with that you can use the Iridium Mail&Web app to send in Facebook updates. Better in my opinion is to use Xweb or Opera mini to access Facebook mobile. This is basically Facebook as you know it without the pictures. You can however read other peoples status updates, posts, comments and so forth. Simply go to the Mail&Web app, go to the Web and visit the list of iridium mobile webistes to find the Facebook link.

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Twitter and Iridium Go

Sending tweets is pretty easy but setting up has to be done with a broadband internet connection. So make sure to do it before you leave. After Twitter is set up you simply go to Iridium Mail&Web and click on tweet to write a tweet. If you send and receive e-mail your tweet will be sent to twitter for posting. You can find instructions for setting up twitter here.

Enjoy!

Joshua van Eijndhoven