MobileMe is a pretty great service from Apple, especially if you have more than one mac and/or an iDevice (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch). The biggest road block for the people that don’t use the service, however, is the annual subscription. Now, thanks to the newest firmware update available for download from iTunes, you can get in on one of the most popular services MobileMe offers free of charge—Find my iPhone.

Find My iPhone in a Nutshell

Find My iPhone is a tracking application that runs on your iOS device and tracks its location. Should you lose your device, you can log into MobileMe and see where it is on a map. You can also have your device display a message (“If this iPhone is found please call…”), play a sound (very helpful if it’s just stuck between some couch cushion), lock the device with a four character PIN, or wipe your device completely so that you keep all your sensitive data out of the hand of more nefarious people.

How to Get Started

1. Open the App Store from one of the following iDevices.
   • iPhone 4
   • iPad
   • iPod touch (4th generation) running iOS 4.2
2. Once the download is complete, open the Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > and add a MobileMe account. Log in to MobileMe using your Apple ID (the email address and password you use to buy apps from the app store). When it’s connected, turn on Find My iPhone.
3. Launch the Find My iPhone app and log in to the same Apple ID, and you’re good to go.

To Make sure that everything is working, just go to Find My iPhone and check to see if the device shows up in the list.

Now if you lose or misplace your iDevice, you can track it down even though you don’t have a paid MobileMe account.

Have you ever recovered an iDevice using Find My iPhone? Let us know in the comments.