If you’ve had a computer die, a hard drive fail, for if you’ve just accidentally erased a music file or folder on your PC or Mac, you know it can be very frustrating (and expensive) to get your music collection back to its former glory.  And, if you’re an iPhone owner, perhaps the most annoying aspect of the situation is knowing that your music and/or video files are locked away on your iPhone, kept from being copied back to your computer because Apple has locked down the content.

But your music and video files aren’t as much a prisoner of your iPhone or iPod as you might think; there are software tools which allow users to copy their music or videos from an iPhone or iPod back to a Windows PC or Mac with a few clicks of the mouse.

In our latest help article, we show you the tools that make copying music from an iPhone or iPod to a Windows PC or Mac as simple as pie.

Read: How to Get Music, Videos Off Your iPhone & Onto Your PC or Mac

Dropbox is, without question, our favorite online storage and syncing solution. With Dropbox installed on one or more of your PCs or Macs, files created or changed in one computer’s Dropbox folder are automatically synced with with the Cloud and the other PCs and Macs linked with your account (if you have the software installed on multiple computers). 

It’s a pretty amazing service – fast, automatic and foolproof (if it’s in the Dropbox folder, it’s synced).  And in our months of using Dropbox, we haven’t encountered a single error. 

But now the service is even better for iPhone users: Dropbox has added the iPhone to its list of compatible devices with the release of the Dropbox iPhone app.

Once you have a Dropbox account (a 2GB account is free, but you can also purchase 50GB or 100GB of online storage), just download the free Dropbox iPhone app [iTunes Link].  Link the app with your account and you instantly have access to your Dropbox files from the iPhone.

From within the app you can view compatible files stored in your Dropbox (PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint MS Office documents, JPG, TIFF and GIF image files, Keynote, Pages and Numbers Mac documents, text files, music, movies and more), or upload photos or videos taken with the iPhone to your Dropbox, in effect storing them online and syncing them with your linked PCs and Macs.  Want to share a file in your Dropbox with someone?  You can do that too, right from the app.

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PDF: Dropbox iPhone Introduction

Editor’s Blog: Why I Love (LOVE!) Dropbox File Sync

AT&T will officially launch MMS service for the iPhone tomorrow, Friday, September 25, sometime around noon CDT.  From AT&T’s Facebook page:

“We know you’ve been eager for this service so we wanted to offer a quick update on the launch plans for MMS on Friday, Sept. 25. Late morning, Pacific Time, on Friday, the new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready … We’ll provide the steps and all of the details you need right here at that time.”

A “carrier settings” software update will be required to begin using the service, which will be made available via iTunes.

One of the only true Gmail disappointments over the years has been the service’s lack of Push support for most mobile devices – including the iPhone. We’ve been lamenting this missing functionality for some time, but today, our laments are no more. 

Push Gmail is now a reality!

iPhone and iPod touch users can add Push Gmail to their handsets as long as they’re running the OS 3.0 or above.  Push service is available via Exchange, so when you set up the account in the Settings menu, be sure to select Exchange as the email service. 

For details on how to set up your iPhone with Push Gmail, click here.

If you’ve ever seen someone wearing iPod or iPhone video eyewear (a.k.a. Head Mounted Displays, or HMDs), you know they look… to put it in the kindest possible terms… screwy. Still, to be able to enjoy a more natural video viewing experience, some users are willing to endure the chuckles. But two upcoming models from Vuzix aim to take a little social sting out of HMD use by disguising them as sunglasses.

The Vuzix Wrap 310 and Wrap 920, while differing slightly in their feature sets, each share the same traditional eyewear camouflage.  And while they’ll obviously be bulkier than the sunglasses most of us own, at least they don’t look as bad as some of the actual sunglasses being sold today. 

This isn’t the first attempt at using the “sunglasses look” to make HMDs more palatable to users; the MyVu Shades have been around since 2008, and while they’re more attractive than other HUDs on the market, they don’t actually look anything like sunglasses.

The Vuzix Wrap 310 and 920 models will be available later this year.