To stay up to date with Presence tips, you can Like Presence’s Facebook page or follow @macremoteaccess on Twitter.

Here are all tips so far:

• When at your Mac, share files with others quickly by right-clicking a file and choosing Share in Presence. (This might be in the Services submenu, depending on your setup.)
• For even quicker file sharing, enter a standard sharing password in the shares window so you don’t have to type it in every time. Great if you often share with the same people.
• Edit your Mac’s iWork files (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) right on your iPad or iPhone with Presence’s help. See the iWork instructions for Presence.
• You can look through your Mac’s camera from anywhere in the world! Click/tap the camera icon in the toolbar. On your iPhone, it’s in the second row of buttons.
• If other people log into your Mac with Presence, you might like to prevent pictures being taken through the camera while you’re at your Mac – see “Allow photos with your Mac’s camera” in the “Photos & Email” section of the Mac app.
• Presence supports resumable downloads, so you can restart a download if it’s interrupted – this is particularly helpful when fetching big files. Safari doesn’t support it though, so use Chrome or Firefox if you need this feature. If you share huge files with others you could advise them of this too. Using a download manager such as Speed Download is also an option.
• On iPhone and iPad, tap and hold to open a file immediately without displaying the menu.
  Just tapping a file brings up the options menu.
• You can reverse this behaviour so that tapping opens a file immediately – see the Options button in the
  toolbar.
• To display the options menu for a folder, tap and hold. Just tapping a folder opens it.
• If (like me) you don’t like too many icons cluttering up your Mac’s menu bar, you can
  hide Presence’s menu bar icon – just untick the “Show menu bar item” box in the More Options
  section. You can still open Presence’s window using the icon in your Applications folder.
• Presence will notify you when someone opens a share, uploads a file or logs into your Mac — but you need to install
  Growl. Growl notifies you about all sorts of things,
  not just events in Presence, and is highly recommended.
• You can view past events of this kind by going to More Options and clicking the View Event Log button.

If you’re not using EasyConnect there’s good news for you too – Presence is now more reliable. If your router misbehaves and starts blocking your connection, you no longer lose your access – Presence will automatically cut over to EasyConnect. The menu bar icon will turn blue, and when you get back to your Mac and you can investigate by opening the Connection pane.

These changes mean that Presence now works first time for most people. So now, you can recommend Presence even to people who aren’t computer-savvy.

If you’ve prepaid for a number of months of EasyConnect, you’ll have received a refund for the unused months.

For more information about how all this works, see http://flyingmac.com/presence/help/easyConnect.html

Presence 2.7 is a free update for users of Presence 2. Install the update when prompted, or click Check for Updates in the More Options section of the Mac application.

Flying Mac announces that FarFinder, the remote file access application for Mac, iPhone and iPad, has been renamed Presence. The new name also marks the release of version 2, bringing major new features.

Presence is a Mac application that provides secure access to the Mac’s files from anywhere on the internet. Access is by web browser from any Mac or PC using a simple, unchanging URL, and by iPhone and iPad using the iOS client.

Internet file access means that users can forget about taking USB drives with them, and because all files are available, there’s no need to choose just a selection of files as with Dropbox and other such services. This is particularly useful for unforeseen requirements and general spontaneity.

Version 2 brings a number of major enhancements:

* The long-awaited iPad-native client is now available.
* Sharing files with others, right from the Mac, brings a new dimension to Presence.
* Presence now provides a bridge between other iOS apps and a remote Mac.
* iPad users get round-trip editing of a Mac’s iWork files, from anywhere.
* EasyConnect opens up Presence to more users in more situations.

Now for iPad as well as iPhone

At last, after many requests from users, Presence runs natively on the iPad. The iPad’s big screen makes for a great experience when browsing through folders, reading documents and looking at photos. Presence’s ability to pass files between a remote Mac and other iOS apps opens up new possibilities for working with files on both iPad and iPhone; more on this below.

Instant sharing, right from the Mac

New in Presence – and also much requested – is the ability to share files with other people by sending them a URL. Unlike cloud-based sharing services, sharing using Presence is instant – there’s no need to wait for files to upload to a server. This makes Presence ideal for sharing large files that are too big to email.

A share can contain multiple files and even whole folders. Additionally, a “browsable” folder can be shared, allowing the recipient to browse a folder directly, viewing and downloading just the files they want.

Presence’s remote access means that shares can be created from anywhere – there is no need to be at the sharing Mac. This, like Presence’s email sending feature, is invaluable if the user is asked for a file while away from the Mac. And while at the Mac, a share is created simply by right-clicking the file in the Finder.

Recipients have access only to the shared files, not to the whole Mac, so privacy is no concern. Sensitive shares can be password-protected if desired.

Gateway to other iOS apps

Presence brings new possibilities to working with files on the iPhone and iPad: it is a bridge between iOS apps and a remote Mac. The remote Mac’s documents and images can be viewed in Presence itself, but Presence can also pass files to other apps that support this.

For example, one might use Presence to access a Mac and pass a PDF to GoodReader in order to use GoodReader’s PDF annotation features, or just because it is the preferred app for reading.

Files can also be transferred in the other direction – from other apps to Presence – and thus saved on the remote Mac.

These file transfers depend on the other app supporting this iOS feature, but Presence can also help when this feature is missing: anything on the clipboard can be saved to the Mac as a file. For example, Hipstamatic doesn’t have a share option, but one can tap and hold a photo to copy it, then switch to Presence and “paste” the photo to the Mac.

iWork round-trip editing

Presence delivers the “holy grail” for iWork users on the iPad: round-trip editing, remotely. The iPad user can open a Pages, Numbers or Keynote file that resides on a remote Mac, make some changes in iWork on the iPad, then save back to the Mac. This has been possible by other methods for tech-savvy users, but Presence makes it easy for everyone.

Apple doesn’t support iOS’s file sharing features in its own apps, so Presence provides this via WebDAV instead. This is done by using a Presence URL like johnsmith.findpresence.com in iWork’s “Copy to WebDAV” and “Copy from WebDAV” features, available in My Documents. Of course, this works from anywhere on the internet.

EasyConnect opens up Presence to more users

Presence’s automatic network configuration means that it “just works” for many home users. However, this isn’t possible on all networks, even home ones – inconsistent standards and poorly-made routers can make automatic configuration impossible, as can the security in workplaces and other non-home locations.

EasyConnect is a new, optional feature to help users in this situation. It is an alternative for users who don’t want to configure routers and modems to work around connection problems, and can also help in workplaces and other institutions where such configuration is impossible. It works by making an outward connection to the Presence server, in a similar way to iChat and Skype.

EasyConnect has a subscription fee of $5 per month per Mac, in addition to Presence’s purchase price. This is to cover additional server costs, ensuring the ongoing viability of the service.

Presence users can continue to use the application without EasyConnect where their network allows it, avoiding the subscription fee; in fact, this is the preferred option. EasyConnect aims to open up Presence to more users, not to gain extra revenue from current users.

More new features

The new version also brings a number of other new features:

* faster loading
* Quick Look
* improved uploads
* resumable downloads
* multiple email accounts
* address book lookup when emailing from the web app
* connecting to shared disks
* spotlight improvements
* raw image preview
* EXIF orientation support
* Growl support

This adds depth to Presence’s existing array of features such as emailing a Mac’s files from anywhere, a slideshow for viewing images and the ability to take a photo through the remote Mac’s iSight camera, as well as the basic functions of file viewing and downloading.

Allowing the Mac to sleep

Apple’s wake-on-demand feature means that many Airport Base Station and Time Capsule users can now allow their Macs to go to sleep; the Mac will wake for Presence access.

This avoids the need to use Energy Saver to prevent the Mac sleeping, although non-Airport users will still need to do this to ensure access. More information is available at http://flyingmac.com/presence/help/sleep.html.

Pricing, availability and requirements

Presence costs $40 for a single-user licence or $70 for a family licence; business pricing is available on request. EasyConnect, if required, costs an additional $5 per month per Mac. The Presence iOS client can be downloaded free of charge from the iOS App Store, and requires a Mac running Presence to connect to.

Upgrading from version 1 (FarFinder) costs $15 for users who purchased before July 2010, and is free for those who purchased after this.

Presence comes with a free 20-day trial period, which includes the ability to use EasyConnect if required.

Presence is available for download exclusively from flyingmac.com, ensuring that customers can try the application before purchase. It is the developer’s opinion that a free trial period is essential for Presence and, in fact, for all software.

Presence requires OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or higher. 10.5 users can use version 1 of Presence, which has fewer features. iOS devices must be running iOS 4.2 or higher.

Apple have changed the App Store rules since FarFinder’s previous release; streaming media over 3G has now some weighty requirements around it and FarFinder in its previous form would no longer be accepted. Implementing Apple’s new requirements for on-demand streaming is a large undertaking, involving on-the-fly transcoding of media files into multiple formats, and there are enough gotchas that it would be difficult to do well.

There are at least two apps that are devoted solely to this feature. If you’ll miss video streaming, have a look at this article. Because they actually convert your media files, these apps should play a much wider array of video formats than FarFinder ever has.

Try it out – it’s simple – but make sure you test it before you rely on it!

Airport Base Station – wired connection

• Open System Preferences
• Choose Energy Saver
• Laptop users: select the Power Adapter section
• Tick the “Wake for ethernet network access” option (wording may vary)

Now it should be safe to let your Mac go to sleep. When you connect to FarFinder or Webjimbo, your Mac
should wake up. Make sure you test it from another computer on your network if you can.
If you have trouble, there’s lots more information in
this Macworld article.

Airport Base Station – wireless connection

If you have a newish Mac (2009 onwards, perhaps), the above should work on a wireless
connection too. If your Mac supports this, the option described above will be called
“Wake for network access”. Again,
the Macworld article
has useful information.

Everyone else

If you don’t have an Airport base station, or if the above doesn’t work for you, your options are:

• Stop your Mac going to sleep using Energy Saver in System Preferences
• Schedule sleep and wake times if you know you don’t need to connect to your Mac at certains times of the day or night,
  thereby saving power.
  You might not save much money, but it’s good for the environment.
• Investigate wake-on-LAN (advanced users only). Note that wake-on-lan is not built into the applications, nor is it likely to be in the future. Your
  aim is to wake your Mac up, then connect to FarFinder or Webjimbo as usual.

“Find Me Anywhere” service for beta users

If you’re using this service for people on difficult networks, you won’t be able to connect to your Mac if it’s asleep. Sorry.