Tag Archives: iPhone

iPhone Quick Tip: Managing a large Camera Roll using Image Capture

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Last night before bed I went to update my apps as I always do, but this time I was con­fronted with a mes­sage: my 16GB iPhone 5 did not have enough stor­age to suc­ces­fully update apps!  Need­less to say, I need a larger capac­ity iPhone, but to imme­di­ately solve the prob­lem I went to my Mac­Book, opened iTunes with my phone con­nected and found that 7 of my 16 gigs were allo­cated to my 2000 pic­ture library!

Con­sid­er­ing that mobile phones are the new point and shoot cam­eras that we all have with us at all times, it’s easy for an unman­aged library to quickly grow beyond its means, and that’s what hap­pened here.  My pre­vi­ous iPhone was 32GB, so I rarely had to watch my mem­ory, but now with less stor­age it may become an issue.  Not to worry though, beca­sue thanks to Techrepublic.com I dis­cov­ered a lit­tle known stock OSX appli­ca­tion that makes man­ag­ing a large iPhone photo library as easy as uning iPhoto!

Image Cap­ture is a ded­i­cated photo man­ager that ships with OSX, but up until today I didn’t know it existed and there­fore I had never known its ben­e­fits!  Sim­ply put, when a cam­era or USB device is con­nected Image Cap­ture acts as an import­ing medium.  It brings up the pho­tos stored on the device, and allows you to quickly view, sort and import or delete mul­ti­ple pho­tos at a time.  Any­one who has been faced with thou­sands of iPhone or iPad pho­tos knows all too well the lack of options to select and delete mul­ti­ple (50 or more) pho­tos at a time.  With IC how­ever, just Shift+Select your way to photo dele­tion heaven and free up much needed stor­age on your iDevice!

For full instruc­tions and a descrip­tion of Image Cap­ture see this post at Techradar.com

Why You Should Touch Your iPhone In Weird Ways

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Thats right, that crys­tal clear touch­screen is scream­ing to be touched in all sorts of ways, so go ahead and tap, swipe and pinch your way to phone calls, text mes­sages and any­thing else you need to do with your iPhone!

Now that you’re no longer afraid of the big bad retina dis­play, lets have a look at some of the cool and time sav­ing ges­tures that you didn’t know about.

Key­board Shortcuts

Typ­ing a long text mes­sage?  Save some time by tap­ping the space bar twice to insert a period and space.  Also, for­get about adding apostrophe’s, type Ill, itll, im or any other word that com­monly has an apos­tro­phe in it and let the iPhone do the rest!

Pinch to Zoom

Most of us already know this one, but if you use two fin­gers you can zoom in on a photo, web page or PDF and zoom out using the oppo­site gesture.

Dou­ble Tap Your Way to HD Video

I just dis­cov­ered this one the other day when I was try­ing to catch a quick video of Dex­ter doing the strangest dog thing ever.  If you’re in Cam­era, and want to shoot in 16:9 widescreen HD, tap the screen twice and voila!

Press and Hold

When using the key­board, press and hold down cer­tain keys to bring up addi­tional options for that key.  Use­ful for typ­ing sym­bols and such for other cur­ren­cies or lan­guages.  When inputting web or email addresses, hold­ing down the “.” key will bring up exten­sions like .org, .ca and oth­ers for easy entry.

Do The Slide

This one is kinda neat.  If you need to enter a sin­gle digit and then head back to more text, try the slide.  tap and hold the 123 but­ton and with­out releas­ing it, slide your fin­ger to the sin­gle digit you need and then release.  Upon let­ting go, you’ll be returned to the alpha keypad.

Take me Home

The home but­ton is a pow­er­ful lit­tle guy!  Hold­ing him for 5 sec­onds will quit the cur­rent app.  Tap­ping him twice will bring up the quick app switcher.  Hold him down for 3 sec­onds and then you can access voice control.

Mind you, theres many more cool short­cuts where these came from, and some can even be dis­cov­ered by acci­den­tally touch­ing your iPhone in strange ways, so don’t be shy-it won’t bite!

 

 

 

Going Paperless: The Challenge

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Photo 2012-07-19 2 42 50 PM

I recently started a job at a mid sized new car deal­er­ship, and as with most deal­er­ships its size reduc­ing its car­bon foot­print was some­where near the bot­tom of its “to do list”.

I’ve worked in this busi­ness before, and at my other deal­er­ship we used to joke about the mas­sive amount of wasted paper, but here there was on lone voice of rea­son that heard my cries for a more “green” ini­tia­tive, and together Cather­ine and I are slowly bring­ing our deal­er­ship into the 21st cen­tury and leav­ing paper behind!

The Goal:

The goal is sim­ple; reduce the amount of paper we waste while increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity and max­i­miz­ing the tools and util­i­ties at our disposal.

The Tools:

The tools we have are basic, run of the mill com­put­ers loaded with Win­dows and not enough RAM!  90% of us have smart­phones, and 100% of us have access to the inter­net in one form or another.  I myself have an iPad and an iPhone as well as a desk­top com­puter all which will play a part in my challenge.

Hard­ware:

  • iPhone 4
  • iPad 3
  • Mac­Book Pro
  • Win­dows Machine

Soft­ware (Apps)

  • Penul­ti­mate
  • Drop­box
  • Ever­note
  • Drop it!
  • Doc­u­ments Pro

The Plan:

The plan is for me to slowly inte­grate sev­eral online tools such as Drop­box and Ever­note into my daily sales and fol­low up rou­tine.  At the same time I will help edu­cate my co-workers to uti­lize the power and con­ve­nience of PDF’s and other forms of editable forms until the need for paper is all but eliminated.

I feel that there will be a num­ber of chal­lenges await­ing me, mostly from the staff here sim­ply due to the fact that they’re com­fort­able in their way of doing things.Training and equipt­ment will put restric­tions on the progress, as to go com­pletely paper­less will require upgraded tech­nol­ogy and soft­ware, which all comes at a cost to the deal­er­ship.  A cost analy­sis will have to be done to deter­mine the finan­cial ben­e­fit of the elim­i­na­tion of paper.

Until then, I’ll be doc­u­ment­ing my progress one screen at a time!

iPhone Personal Hotspot: Real World Useage

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The iPad I recently acquired through my employer is fan­tas­tic! So far I’ve been able to elim­i­nate most of my need to lug arround my lap­top, which is nice because I can’t stand car­ry­ing a bag with me to and from work, just so I can have my lap­top with me.
I know very well that cur­rently a tablet can’t replace a lap­top, but it does thet­rick for most of my daily com­puter needs and more.
As I was out today, I ran into my first issue of not hav­ing an inter­net con­nec­tion, no wi-fi, and I don’t have 4G. So, I turned on my iPhone and rum­maged through the Set­tings menu to find the Per­sonal Hotspot option, and I enabled it for the first time. I flipped on my iPad, enable Wi-Fi and there was my iPhone sig­nal loud and clear!
I was skep­ti­cal at first, I imag­ined a snails pace at best, but to my sur­prise the con­nec­tion seemed just as fast as that on my mobile! Impres­sive! So, shortly after I down­loaded Speed Test mobile app, and the results were fair. just under 3.24 Mbps down and 1.19 Mbps up.
All in all, this sim­ple workaround saves me $30 a month, so I just can’t complain.

To access your Per­sonal Hotspot;

    1. Open Settings>Personal Hotspot on select “On“
    2. Take note of the Pass­word pro­vided
    3. Enable Wi-Fi on the device in need of a con­nec­tion
    4. Search for your iPhones net­work and select it
    5. Enter pass­word, and your good to go!

Note: Using Per­sonal Hotspot uses data from the device sup­ply­ing a con­nec­tion, so if you have a small data plan (500mb/mo) keep an eye on your usage!

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Facebook Camera: Instagram Alternative for Facebook Fans

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Screen Shot 2012 05 29 at 11 40 06 AM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Face­book may have thought Insta­gram was a bil­lion dol­lar idea, but not every­one is a fan.  With this in mind, Face­book has released an Instagram-esque cam­era app for the iPhone allow­ing users with­out an Insta­gram account to shoot, edit and share their pho­tos right to Face­book with sim­i­lar fil­ters to Instagram.

When you first launch Face­book Cam­era, nat­u­rally you’ll need to login with your Face­book cre­den­tials, to allow for view­ing and shar­ing fea­tures.  Once logged in, the home screen is very rem­i­nis­cent of Insta­gram, how­ever, users of Face­book Cam­era will be able to view friends pho­tos as well as shoot, edit and share your own mem­o­ries.  The app works well as a photo viewer, allow­ing users to like, com­ment and tag pho­tos with a cou­ple clicks, and scroll through friends pho­tos seam­lessly, all while being a touch away from cap­tur­ing your own shots should the need arise.

Shoot­ing & Edit­ing Photos

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The cam­era por­tion lacks a bit, allow­ing users to select flash and focus as the only options.  Once you’ve shot your pic, choose from one of 15 fil­ters, all very famil­iar might I add to it’s sis­ter app Insta­gram.  Con­tinue to crop, enhance and rotate your pic if desired, then click to add it to the queue of pho­tos to be uploaded.

Shar­ing

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Once the photo is set to your lik­ing, it’ll auto­mat­i­cally save to your Cam­era Roll where you can leave it if you wish, how­ever chances are you’re gonna want to share it with your Face­book friends.  In this case, Face­book friends are the only net­work of friends this app can share with, so go ahead and tag, com­ment and finally share the pic(s) to your wall for all to see.  Because this is a native Face­book app, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see the option to share it via any of Facebook’s rival social net­works, but as I men­tioned ear­lier, if you’re a loyal FB user then this is a great, headache free way to share your pho­tos online.

Inter­face

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One thing I really like about Face­book Cam­era is how nicely its user inter­face is laid out.  Aside from the blue accents, you’d never know it was tightly inte­grated with the social media giant.  The photo browser is a nice, sim­ple way to scour you photo feed with­out hav­ing to read all the sta­tus updates and see who’s win­ning what game.  As I men­tioned ear­lier, the cam­era is a bit too sim­ple for my lik­ing, yet the process of select­ing, edit­ing and upload­ing pho­tos is made sim­ple by the intu­itive but­ton choices and layout.

Over­all

I reviewed this app because I’m a huge fan of Insta­gram, but I have friends who aren’t.  I feel this app is great for the few who haven’t and likely won’t jump on the Insta­gram band­wagon, and those who are com­fort­able with Face­book and love shar­ing pho­tos.  If you nes­tle it nicely beside your Face­book icon, I believe it’ll get some good use and hope­fully help every­one to share more pic­tures more often.

Touch Your iPhone in Weird Ways…

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wpid-extra-2012-04-13-17-41.pngThats right, that crys­tal clear touch­screen is scream­ing to be touched in all sorts of ways, so go ahead and tap, swipe and pinch your way to phone calls, text mes­sages and any­thing else you need to do with your iPhone!
Now that you’re no longer afraid of the big bad retina dis­play, lets have a look at some of the cool and time sav­ing ges­tures that you didn’t know about.

Key­board Short­cuts
Typ­ing a long text mes­sage? Save some time by tap­ping the space bar twice to insert a period and space. Also, for­get about adding apostrophe’s, type Ill, itll, im or any other word that com­monly has an apos­tro­phe in it and let the iPhone do the rest!

Pinch to Zoom
Most of us already know this one, but if you use two fin­gers you can zoom in on a photo, web page or PDF and zoom out using the oppo­site gesture.

Dou­ble Tap Your Way to HD Video
I just dis­cov­ered this one the other day when I was try­ing to catch a quick video of Dex­ter doing the strangest dog thing ever. If you’re in Cam­era, and want to shoot in 16:9 widescreen HD, tap the screen twice and voila!

Press and Hold
When using the key­board, press and hold down cer­tain keys to bring up addi­tional options for that key. Use­ful for typ­ing sym­bols and such for other cur­ren­cies or lan­guages. When inputting web or email addresses, hold­ing down the “.” key will bring up exten­sions like .org, .ca and oth­ers for easy entry.

Do The Slide        
This one is kinda neat. If you need to enter a sin­gle digit and then head back to more text, try the slide. tap and hold the 123 but­ton and with­out releas­ing it, slide your fin­ger to the sin­gle digit you need and then release. Upon let­ting go, you’ll be returned to the alpha keypad.

Take me Home
The home but­ton is a pow­er­ful lit­tle guy! Hold­ing him for 5 sec­onds will quit the cur­rent app. Tap­ping him twice will bring up the quick app switcher. Hold him down for 3 sec­onds and then you can access voice control.

Mind you, theres many more cool short­cuts where these came from, and some can even be dis­cov­ered by acci­den­tally touch­ing your iPhone in strange ways, so don’t be shy-it won’t bite!

Camera+

Classic App: Camera+ for iPhone

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By no means am I here to down­play the Cam­era app that comes with the iPhone 4, it takes great pho­tos and is sim­ple to use. But if you want more from a Cam­era, mak­ing bet­ter use of the poten­tial the iPhone has for a cam­era app then look no fur­ther than Cam­era+.

If I had a list of apps I couldn’t live with­out this would surely be on it.  For only $0.99 it’s a no brainer!

The inter­face is very much like the stan­dard cam­era, you can choose to have a grid on screen as well as adjust expo­sure, white bal­ance and focus with a pinch of your finger.

Fea­tures include;

  • Sta­bi­lizer
  • Timer
  • Con­stant Flash
  • Geo­t­ag­ging
  • Shar­ing (Twit­ter, Face­book and Flickr)
  • Burst Mode

Now, once you’ve taken the photo is when the app kicks into high gear.  The Light­box option gives you a unique oppor­tu­nity to choose which pho­tos you want in your iPhone albums and edit them so they’re per­fect when they get there.

The lat­est update of Cam­era+ brought with it a seem­ingly infi­nite num­ber of adjust­ments and fil­ters you can add to your pho­tos to cap­ture the exact feel­ing you wanted when the pic was taken.  The app even tries to help comen­sate for dif­fer­ent light­ing sce­nar­ios after the fact, how­ever not much to my liking.

One unique item that sets this util­ity apart from it’s stan­dard Apple coun­tepart is its abil­ity to share directly to face­book from inside the app.  Apple’s cam­era is Twit­ter friendly, but not Face­book, so you should enjoy that!

Over­all, this is a sta­ple for any iPhone user, and you can ask any of the 6 mil­lion users and they’ll tell you the same.

Get Cam­era+ here.

Waterproof Your Device With LIQUIPEL

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Water­proof your device with­out a case?  But how?

Cal­i­for­nia based com­pany Liquipel has cre­ated a unique process that cov­ers your entire device in an invis­i­ble layer of a spe­cial mol­e­c­u­lar mate­r­ial which ren­ders the device water­proof upon completion.

The web­site doesn’t pro­vide much more infor­ma­tion then what you see here, but there are a cou­ple of unbe­liev­able videos of devices being com­pletely sub­merged in water and com­ing out unharmed!

 

The process takes place at their plant in Cal­i­for­nia, and at the moment is only avail­able to US res­i­dents.  The cost includes ship­ping to and from their plant, and track­ing is available.

Stan­dard Ground $59.00 — 2 or 3 day turnaround

Pri­or­ity Liquipel $69.00 — Same day turnaround

Liquipel & Gad­get Film (pro­tec­tive film) $79.00 — Up to 3 day turnaround

For more infor­ma­tion and to order go to Liquipel.com