Apple’s lone outstretched hand to the social web, the MobileMe News “blog” is back with another helpful hint for users, this time about using iPhone 3.0 to search older email on the server:

select your Inbox or another folder from your MobileMe Mail account and access the search field by scrolling to the top of the message list. (Tap the status bar at the top to quickly reveal the search field.) Type what you want to search for and tap To, From, or Subject, or All to search all three. You’ll see the messages that match the search on your device, and you can then tap “Continue Search on Server” to see the remaining messages that are stored in the MobileMe cloud.

I’ve used this to find old order info, network machine names, and scads of other stuff buried in server-side email. Since it doesn’t (yet?) search the body of the email, it’s not as useful as Gmail’s WebApp, for example, but it’s lightyears ahead of where it was under 2.2.1.

Another countdown to Macworld, another rumor! This one says that Apple is developing a turbo-boosted version of Time Capsule that would offer HP Media Smart Server-like capabilities. Some of the more nifty, iPhone related features, according to 9to5Mac, could include:

The device will tie in MobileMe with an Apple built-in Dynamic DNS system. For instance, if your MobileMe account was “9to5mac”, your domain name would be “9to5mac.me.com”. This is how you’d reach your filesystem throughout the Internet. Your media would also reside here. [...] Sharing media with iPod Touch and iPhones both over the Internet and while at home. AppleTV as well.

Hey, if multiple drives and RAID-5 (RAID-6!) are in the cards, it might even be a viable Drobo alternative — something that’s already the darling of the Apple community…